


All That We Ever Will Be

by MaryPSue



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: F/F, Ficlet Collection, Gen, M/M, Multi, and a recurring OC Lady Pitchiner, featuring my temporary obsession with a Kozmotis Pitchiner redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:04:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 35,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7014145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short fics and ficlets originally posted to tumblr. Includes prompt fills from the meme, several AUs, and a healthy smattering of purple prose.</p><p>Now playing: Tia, a firmly irreverent witch, gets more than she bargained for when she accidentally makes an offering to Gaia, goddess of the earth. And by 'more than she bargained for', she means 'vegetables'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Once upon a time, there was a man who knew too much._

The little clearing is bare. The tangled undergrowth of the forest around it does not intrude here; the only growing things on this patch of blackened, scorched earth are a few weak and weedy shoots of fireweed, as rich a purple as a king’s robes, as Persian ink. Soon they, too, will die off, succumbing to the oncoming cold. All around the clearing, the trees are just beginning to turn, lush green foliage turning to brilliant flares of crackling colour in a last glorious hurrah before death. From outside, it looks almost as though the clearing is frozen in time, the spreading flame clinging to the forest. If you breathe deeply, you can still smell the smoke on the air.

Nothing will grow here, on this patch of blasted earth, between the dark lines of charcoal that pick out the frame of a house humble even by the standards of log cabins. Nothing will grow here, where the wind takes on the mournful voice of a doomed man and the trees whisper as though the ancient secrets that once filled that house have seeped through the ground and into their roots. Nothing will grow here, where the very air smells charred and the ground hides under a blanket of ash.

_Sometimes, in the days just after the burning, people would find scraps of paper in the ash, or blowing on the mournful wind. Paper with writing in strange languages, paper edged with gold and covered in stars. People would cross themselves and mutter prayers at the sight, hurry out of the way to avoid being touched by such fragments, for fear that the knowledge lurking within might whisper itself into their ears and corrupt them._

_There are no more scraps of paper. They have all blown away._

Fire is, has always been, capricious in its whims, and the blaze that brought the clearing to its deathly, ashen state is no different. Lines of charcoal are all that remain of the foundation; lines of charcoal, and the occasional burnt, jagged spike of wood. But the body of the heavy iron stove remains, warped from the heat so that the door will not close, gaping like a monstrous mouth. The chimney is nothing but a pile of crumbling, blackened brick, but one window-frame survived the blaze intact. What little furniture there had been is burnt to ash, the one lamp melted into a mangled heap of metal, but against all odds, a broken wooden bedframe still stands on the barren patch of earth that was once a dwelling-place.

_They’d set it aflame at night, while he was out conversing with demons or dancing with witches – no one ever believed that such a man would venture out past the witching hour simply to look at the stars. The bed had been empty. The house had been empty. But as it collapsed into itself, as the cleansing flame roared out of its windows and over its walls, many of  them will swear on their lives that they heard a howling cry go up. The books, most agree, crying out in the moment of their death, calling their master, the wail rising with the billows of thick black smoke and the sparkling embers to obscure the face of the silver-coin moon._

No one goes to the clearing anymore. No one dares. No one wishes to meet a vengeful ghost, or whatever black magic keeps any wholesome thing from growing, keeps even the hardy fireweed weak and sickly and coaxes it into death. Let the dead keep their secrets.

No one wants to stumble across something that might make them wonder if they were wrong.

_When he’d come running back, shouting at the sight of the plume of smoke and the great flames licking up into the sky, the butcher and the miller’s son had each caught him by an arm and held him back. He’d struggled, spat and snarled, cursed them with words no one had ever heard spoken, but they’d held him steady as the flames ate through his home, that accursed centre of depravity and darkness._

_When the first scrap of paper had floated free on a gust of hot wind, he’d let out a long, inhuman wail and renewed his efforts tenfold. He’d shaken off both the butcher and the miller’s son with a strength that could only have been born of the Pit, and dashed forward into the inferno before anyone could stop him._

_The paper was covered with strange symbols, loops and whorls and curlicues, and a diagram of the stars. They’d carefully thrown it back into the fire._

_They didn’t even find a body the next morning, once the fire had burnt itself out. Just a pile of silvery ash and a few charred fragments of tooth and bone._

The wind rattles the trees especially fiercely tonight, a few flame-coloured leaves shaken down before their time. The shadows of branches in the brilliant moonlight leave ghostly images dancing across the barren ground: spindly, reaching hands; scuttling, many-legged creatures; a figure, slender as a shadow, rising from the ashes.

There’s a flicker of gold in the dark, the flash of captured embers, as Pitch Black opens his eyes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From a prompt on the meme:
> 
> _Ever since Katherine gave Pitch the locket, she hoped there was some way to restore him to the person he once was. Then she found somewhere a spell that could give someone the ability to banish evil. She immediately put the spell on herself, unfortunately, in order to banish evil from someone, that person must want to stop being evil. Still, Katherine thought, if she could reach the soul of Kozmotis Pitchiner, just for a second, the spell would work._
> 
> _When she got kidnapped, she tried to somehow remind Pitch of the person he was, but nothing worked. Not knowing what else to do Katherine tried to keep him talking, just so she would have a bit more time to think. Finally she asked, what would happen if she agreed to become Pitch’s daughter. She’d have to be transformed somehow, right? The answer was, she’d have to be in the similar state Nightlight was in - trapped inside Pitch’s heart until all her light was destroyed and her soul was filled with shadows. Only since she wasn’t a spectral being, Katherine wouldn’t be able to trap him or to resist the taint of darkness._
> 
> _That gave Katherine an idea. A crazy, crazy idea. If she couldn’t reach Pitch’s soul from the outside, maybe she would be able to do it from the inside?_

When North finally finds Katherine, she isn’t in Big Root celebrating with the others. Instead she’s outside, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest on the very edge of the forest, staring forlornly into the sky after a rapidly-diminishing light speeding up towards the brilliant full moon. If he hadn’t been looking for her, North might have missed her, taken her for just another of the slender shadows cast by the trees. It’s only the faint flicker of her now-golden eyes that gives her away.  
  
He smiles, and sits down next to her, careful not to spill the mugs of hot cocoa that Ombric had sent with him. The man himself has been besieged by questions and worries from the parents and children of Santoff Claussen ever since they’d returned with Pi- _Kozmotis_ , but he certainly hasn’t forgotten Katherine. North holds a mug out to her, and she takes it with a grateful smile, wrapping her fingers around it and breathing in the steam that rises from its surface with an almost wistful look.  
  
“Why are you not in at the party?” North asks, and Katherine looks up, something flat and blank and foreign in her bright eyes for a moment before she gives him a weak smile and is all at once Katherine again, albeit a darkened one.   
  
“Why aren’t _you_?” she shoots back, uncurling ever so slightly. The forest around them grows steadily darker, and Katherine blinks once, sending the gathering shadows racing away back into the shelter of the trees. “Sorry.”  
  
“We worry about you.” North takes a sip of his cocoa and watches the fleeing shadows with interest. They don’t frighten him, he’s seen how harmless they’ve become since Katherine’s coup, but it’s an odd and mildly uncomfortable thought that it is his friend commanding them and not Pitch. Odd, too, to think that he will never cross swords with the Nightmare King again. “What’s the matter?”  
  
Katherine shrugs in response, staring into her mug. “Nightlight’s angry with me.”  
  
“You had a fight?”  
  
“No. But he’s avoiding me again.” She blows onto her cocoa and takes a long drink, licking her lips childishly when she finishes, and it strikes North again just how much she’s grown up since he first met her. “I thought I’d finally cornered him, that we’d _have_ to talk, but he wouldn’t even look at me.”  
  
North glances up, towards the stars overhead and the light that Katherine had been watching when he found her. It’s gone now, leaving no trace of its passing.  
  
“I’m not sorry,” Katherine says, and there’s a vehemence to her words that North can’t doubt. “I’m _not_.”  
  
“Why would you be?”  
  
She meets his eyes, and the half-smile she wears is not one that he knows. “Nightlight can’t stand to look at me. Kailash doesn’t know me anymore. All the children are scared of me -”  
  
“You don’t know that.”  
  
Katherine raises an eyebrow, levels a look that is entirely too sarcastic at North. It takes him an instant to remember. “Oh. You _do_ know, don’t you?”  
  
She nods, and looks back at her cocoa. North squashes the pressing curiousity that demands to know how, exactly, it feels to know the fears and worries and anxieties of those around her, whether it’s anything like her usual five senses or more like the connection that they and the other Guardians share or like something else entirely. There will be plenty of time for such questions later.   
  
He isn’t sure, though, just what he _should_ say. Luckily, Katherine fills the silence for him.   
  
“I just wanted…I did the right thing, didn’t I? I _did_ ,” she answers herself, fiercely, and North nods in confirmation. “You saw him with Mother Nature – or I suppose she’s called Seraphina. You saw how happy they were. I wouldn’t change anything. I did the right thing,” Katherine repeats, with conviction. “It’s just…somehow, I thought a happy ending would be happier.”  
  
North isn’t quite sure what to say to that, either. He’s never been as good with words as he has with action, and so, he acts, reaching out and wrapping an arm around Katherine’s slim shoulders. A small sigh escapes her, and she leans against him, resting her head on his shoulder. She’s a little colder than she was before, but not so much that it’s uncomfortable to hold her like this.   
  
“If it isn’t happy,” he says, or hears himself saying, “then maybe it’s not the ending.”  
  
Katherine looks up, and though her eyes are shining a smile brightens her face. “Good,” she says. “If we’re all in a story, then I don’t want it to end. Ever.”  
  
North hums in agreement, and squeezes Katherine’s shoulders a little tighter.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the Wardrobe AU comics on tumblr, it's an AU where the two different versions of Pitch are forced to share a living space. Neither of them are particularly delighted about it.

Pitch Black has always been Fear, nothing more and nothing less. And he has always been satisfied with his lot, always been pleased to be separate from the mass of superstitious, short-lived, silly humans he shepherds.  But even so, there are times, quiet, secret moments, when he wonders at, even envies, what Pitchiner sees as his greatest weakness.

He wonder what it’s like. To know that you once were one of them, that you have their emotions, their longings and desires and memories and hurts and sorrows and delights, beating in your breast. It’s no wonder that Pitchiner sees it as a vulnerability, a weakness, to be able to feel real compassion or real hatred for their kind, but Pitch wonders if it isn’t a strength unique to him as well. Pitch himself has watched humankind since he was first drawn to the flickering shadows of their campfires, since the first cautionary tale, the first scream and flash of teeth in the dark. He’s watched them carefully, tracked and occasionally influenced their progress, learned their stories as they passed into myths and finally into truths that the equally-mythical ‘everybody’ knows. He’s been by their side since the moment they first walked the earth, and by that standard he should know them better than anyone else. And yet, though he has in his time studying them gained echoes of their dreams and longings, he remains painfully aware that his perspective is that of an outsider, an observer, forever at one remove from the species he studies and imitates with such care.

Pitchiner has no such barriers, and Pitch finds himself breathless with jealousy when he demonstrates an insight into the darkest, most deeply-ingrained terrors of each individual that Pitch, for all his millennia of experience, could never hope to imitate. Every casual, thoughtless cruelty, every personalized brutality, every exquisite horror flows directly from that one great difference between the two, and these are times when Pitch can hardly consider it a weakness.

And, too, he can hardly consider human emotion to be a weakness on those rare and strange nights when Pitchiner forgoes violence, forgoes insults, in favour of silence and almost gentleness. Usually, their encounters are ferocious, as bloody as battles and as violent, both trying to come out the victor; usually, Pitch thinks, his larger counterpart’s displays of dominance are as much to prove to himself as to Pitch that he is in control, not only of Pitch’s desires but his own. And usually, that’s just the way Pitch likes it. (Not that he would ever admit to liking it.)

But there are nights where the weight of his isolation and the wane of his power presses down on him like the earth above his nebulously-located lair caving in, nights when the laughter of children sounds too loud and too harsh to bear. There are nights when he can’t manage to stir the mire of his thoughts into anything resembling passion, furious or frustrated or even fueled by a cruel and merciless and utterly inhuman glee. These nights are like quicksand, like tar, mercilessly sucking him down. And though Pitch is not one of the myriad mayfly humans he wonders if, like their form and their feelings, he hasn’t picked up the echo of one of their diseases, not of the body but of the mind.

It’s rare that these nights coincide with what Pitch at first called Pitchiner’s ‘moments of weakness’, hoping to goad a response from the other, usually so obsessed with his own invulnerability. It hadn’t worked. Nothing serves to draw Pitchiner out of whatever thoughts he sinks himself in, nothing whips him up into his usual wrath or smug good humour. He treats Pitch with unwarranted gentleness, kindness, as though Pitch might break, even if that’s the last thing Pitch wants.

When Pitch is feeling quite himself, there is nothing more infuriating. But on those few and far-between occasions that the hopelessness of his very existence strikes him like a two-by-four, he finds himself wondering just what is whirling around Pitchiner’s head, what flaws and failures Pitchiner might consider, try to mend. Pitch knows that he himself cannot change; he is Fear incarnate, his only crime is in his existence. He will rise up again, in the fullness of time, in the cycle of things, but the thought is hardly reassuring when the human shape he’s grown so used to foists its fear and desire and surprising lack of long-term vision on him. And he wonders, has to wonder, what it must be like to know those feelings like they belong to you, to live every day in that urgent, white-hot feeling of running out of time.

Sometimes he asks, though he never gets any answers. Pitch is not a fool; he has read every book that Pitchiner has brought to him, spellbooks and histories alike, relics from a Golden Age of another time and another world. He knows all about the girl and the general. But sometimes, he asks anyway. The humans tell stories for a reason, after all.

But in the end, there are no words that can capture what Pitchiner wishes to be free of and Pitch wishes to feel for himself, even just once. Sometimes, it’s enough – has to be enough - just to lie together, in silence, and let the darkness drown them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From another prompt:
> 
> _Nightlight is the Nightmare King, Kozmotis Pitchiner is the bodyguard of little Prince Lunanoff. It is the battle on the Moonclipper! Run with it how you please o3o_

_Once, there was a boy…_

He can’t blame them. They’ve not been parents long. But he can’t help but wonder what could have been, if only Artemis – if only _his Tsar_ hadn’t acquiesced to his wife’s demands, hadn’t shared her worries, had placed the safety of his people before the safety of his child. If Kozmotis hadn’t been pulled from the ranks to play bodyguard to the little tsarevich, if _he_ had been the one standing outside those heavy gates, he would never have given in. Never have given up.

Never have become the _monster_ that has chased them halfway across the galaxy, its stolen ship a limping hulk, bleeding black from every battlescar. Its stolen body no better.

 _Once, there was a boy, no more than a boy_ –

Now there is nothing but a husk, a blackened shell, a creature that moves like a puppet with half its strings cut, gangling limbs and awkward, unpracticed steps almost comical until the moment it grins in your face and tears you to bits with those elegant hands. Now there is nothing but a high, crystalline laugh, delighted and joyful and far too innocent to belong to anything this corrupt, this _rotten_. Now there is nothing but eyes too large and too luminous for the narrow face, nothing but erratic strikes and whimsical, capricious attacks, nothing but an enemy who is, for all its ungainly grace, unpredictable enough to give even the man who would have been general the fight of his life.

 _If they had only let me_ –

It swipes at him, and he counters with a block but before he knows it his feet are swept out from under him, and he lands with a crash of armour on his back. For an instant he can’t breathe, can’t move, can hardly see, thinks desperately of the children he’s sworn to protect and the parents, the rulers, the _friends_ he doesn’t know if he can –

Long fingers cup his jaw, lightly, touch cool as an autumn breeze, and then dig in like iron and force his head up to meet those lamplike eyes. The thing that was a boy’s head tilts, twists _just_ too far to be natural, and it studies his face curiously. His skin crawls at its touch, and he wants to pull away, wants to stab it, wants to spit in its face. He tries to shout, to snarl, but all that comes out is a wheeze. His limbs still will not cooperate, and the oily feeling of fearlings pressing against his skin is seeping downwards from the fingers that still dig into the flesh just below his ear. Panic flares, and he struggles vainly, lashes out, has to get away get away he can’t he _can’t_ they _need_ him he’s _sworn an oath_ -

The terrible creature _smiles_ , and its teeth are pearly, perfectly rounded, a child’s teeth in that twisted face. Somehow it’s more frightening than a maw full of fangs would have been.

Somewhere below, a scream, high-pitched and frightened _and female_ and quickly cut off.

The terror that paralyzed him turns to quicksilver rage in an instant. Kozmotis throws the creature off of him with a roar like something wounded, feeling the blood pulse in his temples and hearing nothing over the pounding of it in his ears. Sera was below. Sera was watching the little tsarevich, Sera was _hiding_ him, _Sera_ –

 _Once there was a boy_ –

It is a boy no longer. It is _nothing_ but a monster.

He springs to his feet, swings the scythe up, just as the creature drives its spear directly towards his heart.

…

Sera brushes the sticky black goop from her hands and kicks aside the last of the bodies, stopping in her tracks when no more fearlings rush in to fill the gap. She stops, suspicious, and hurries back to the bassinet, a sudden terror seizing her.

The boy is still there, staring up at her with wide and solemn eyes. Seraphina’s breath rushes out in one long huff, and her knees give way beneath her. She only just catches herself on the bassinet as she slumps towards the floor.

It’s too quiet. Everything’s too quiet.

“Stay here,” she whispers to the little tsarevich, “and don’t make a sound.” He’s too young to understand her, but she could swear there’s something like understanding in his wide blue eyes. He blinks at her, silently, and she nods, forcing a smile.

She steps over the broken door, gingerly sidesteps the fearling bodies in the hall. There are fewer of them than she’d expected, and when she reaches the top of the stairs she sees why.

The ship’s deck is a battlefield, a wasteland fit only for carrion. Black bodies are dissolving into ooze on nearly every surface, the hull is pockmarked with craters from cannonfire, and from the look of the mast the ship will not fly again.

There is no sign of the Lunanoffs.

There is no sign of her father.

There is also no sign of the being that has wrought this destruction, and so, feeling rather as though she’s dreaming, Seraphina drifts up and around the deck of the _Moonclipper_ , to where she heard the fighting last. Her body floats along with her as though detached from her thoughts, pleasantly numb. She’ll pay for it later, she’s certain.

She doesn’t want to look. But she has to. Something larger than herself compels her to lean over the railing, to let the winds of the aether catch her long hair and threaten to tumble her off into the vast dark beyond.

There are two new constellations hovering in the void.

There is a streak of black against the blue atmosphere of the little world where they were supposed to have been safe, growing smaller as it falls.

There is no sign of her father.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter that earns this collection its 'Mature' rating. 
> 
>  
> 
> [For context.](http://gretchensinister.tumblr.com/post/57677493325/war-scythe#notes)

A week of shore leave is both too much and not enough. Both for the same reason: Kozmotis wants Sandy to meet his wife.

Sandy had thought he’d have a little more time to prepare, and he’s trying to contain his terror as they pull into port. It’s one thing to hear, in the…ah…heat of the moment, that his lover’s wife knows all about them and approves of their relationship; it’s quite another to actually have to look her in the eye, knowing full well that he’s seen parts of her husband that only she is supposed to see, and knowing that she knows.

Quite besides which, he wants to make a good impression. He has a feeling that if he inadvertently insults or offends Lady Pitchiner, it will be a very, _very_ long week indeed.

“What’s the matter?” Koz asks, jokingly, as the taxi glides noiselessly along, suspended on a cushion of air a foot from the pavement. For some reason, it’s making Sandy feel more space-sick than he ever has onboard a ship. “You look like you’re going to your execution, not for a vacation.”

Sandy manages a weak grin at that, but he doesn’t respond.

The house, when they finally reach it, is smaller and more modest than Sandy had thought it would be. He finds that oddly reassuring, for some reason, and it gives him enough strength to follow Kozmotis all the way up the stairs before his nerve fails him once again. The door swings wide before the general can even raise a hand, and Sandy finds himself looking up at the very person he’s been dreading meeting.

Lady Pitchiner is tall, almost as tall as her husband, though her build is far more solid than his whipcord frame. Something creaks when she turns, offering an explanation for both her rather formidable curves and her rigid posture. Sandy has to quickly turn his thoughts away from whalebone under satin, away from the concept of underclothes altogether but _especially_ in the specific case, because this is their first meeting and stars help him, he’s _going_ to make a good impression.  

He’s nearly knocked over by the sweep of her skirts as she glides out to greet her husband, moving like nothing so much as a battleship under full sail, sleek and elegant and humming with barely-concealed power. Most other upper-class women Sandy has met (though he’ll admit the sample size is small) have had some sort of softness about them, have seemed to reduce themselves in order to take up as little space as possible. Lady Pitchiner, however, moves like she is aware of exactly how much space she fills, and intends to fully occupy all of it. And she seems about as soft as a sheathed blade.

The kiss she gives Kozmotis in greeting is just slightly too long and too deep for propriety, although considering why and how long they’ve been separated, Sandy doesn’t think he can fault her. And then she turns a knowing smile in his direction, with perhaps just the _faintest_ twinkle of mischief. In an instant, Sandy knows that she’s already taken the measure of him. Whether or not she finds him wanting has yet to be determined.

“You must be Sandy,” she says, and her smile grows wider. “Koz has told me such a lot about you.”

Sandy’s still not certain if this is a good or a bad thing. But he swallows down his nerves, and returns the grin, bowing as deeply as he’s able. He risks a glance up from the lowest point, to see that her smile has grown. Emboldened, he finally finds his tongue. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“So polite!” she exclaims softly, and the twinkle of mischief grows clearer in her eye as she purrs, “The pleasure is _all_ mine.”

Sandy turns pumpkin-orange, blushing starlight, and doesn’t say another word until dinner.

…

By the time dinner rolls around, Sandy finally feels comfortable enough to join in the conversation. He’s even managed to lower his guard enough to return some of Lady Pitchiner’s (“Call me Cybele, please”) good-natured teasing. So, he supposes, he really should have been more prepared.

Still, he’d defy anyone not to choke on the (quite excellent) roast when, in the middle of a conversation about how they should spend the week that they have together, she says with a perfectly straight face, “And of course you’ll have to fuck Kozmo senseless so that I can watch.”

Over his coughing, Sandy hears Kozmotis sigh. “Don’t scare him away before he’s even really in the door.”

“Scare? I thought -”

“Sandy’s fairly delicate.” Sandy opens his mouth to protest, but another fit of coughing interrupts him and he settles instead for glaring into the teeth of Koz’ shit-eating grin.

“ ‘Delicate’ seems a rather unusual choice of description for someone who’s willing to indulge _your_ peculiarities, darling,” Lady – _Cybele_ retorts, without missing a beat, grinning just as wide and just as wicked. “Speaking of which, have you completely forgotten everything you knew about safety and sanity, or are you simply ignoring it?”

Sandy finally manages to clear his airway and straightens up, to see Koz looking hunted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he bluffs, and Cybele raises one eyebrow. “All right, fine. Is this about the candles, or -”

“I think you know _exactly_ what I’m talking about. I taught you better than to give your partner a blade that’s bigger than he is.”

Sandy coughs again, certain that his face is positively radiant with embarrassment. He should really say something in his and Koz’ defense, he’s sure, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to be said. Besides, he has to admit he agrees with Cybele on this one. Luckily, she notices how flustered he’s growing, and takes pity on him.

“Don’t worry, Sandy, I don’t blame _you_.” She takes a sip of the wine (“Lacertan, I’m afraid, but their vineyards have gotten so much better in the past few cycles, you wouldn’t believe it”) and gives Koz another glare, though this one is somewhat more indulgent than the last. “I know whose brainless idea that one must have been.  Now the question is, how do we discourage him from coming up with an even more reckless idea?” The wink she aims at Sandy should be classified as a deadly weapon.

Sandy, in return, stares down into the wine in his glass for a moment before taking a long, fortifying draught. It really is rather good, with just a hint of the glow of late evening sunlight on the way down, and before he knows it he’s saying, “Well, it’ll have to be something drastic.”

Kozmotis laughs, one surprised bark, and Cybele hums interestedly, her smile growing warmer. “What do you suggest?” she asks, and Sandy starts to answer, only to stutter into silence at the feeling of her hand on his knee, a warm weight that rests there for only an instant before skimming softly upwards. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Sandy swallows thickly (had it always been this hot in the dining room?) and tries to remember what he was about to say. “I – we -” Her hand pauses, hovering _right_ on the edge of where its presence would be most distracting, and he has to struggle to collect his thoughts. “What if – we gave him a demonstration?”

Cybele squeezes the top of his thigh, lightly, before withdrawing. “What an excellent idea. I like the way you think.”

Sandy smiles, biting his bottom lip and hoping he won’t be asked to get up from the table anytime too soon.

…

Their bedroom is practically a museum of the titillating. Sandy looks around in awe and just a touch of intimidation. He’s a grown star, he’d like to think he’s seen a thing or two on his travels round the galaxy, and yet, he still has no idea what half the interestingly-worked metal-and-leather contraptions are even meant to _do_. And here he’d thought that the things he and Kozmotis got up to on board the _Endeavour_ were outré. Now he sees that Koz wasn’t lying when he said that that had just been making do.

Koz’ hand on his shoulder is familiar and reassuring, grounding. “Don’t let us drag you in over your head,” he says, when Sandy looks up, and though his tone is light and joking, his eyes are serious. They’re not going to throw anything more at Sandy than he can handle, and the knowledge settles some of the worry that batters at Sandy’s brain, leaving just enough uncertainty to be exciting. He shakes his head, reaches up and pats Koz’ hand where it rests on his shoulder, and Koz’ expression clears.

“And Cybele tells me _I_ come on too strong,” he continues, in an undertone, shaking his head, and Sandy stifles a giggle.  

The subject of their conversation locks the door behind them, and turns with a positively predatory look. “You have no idea how I’ve anticipated this,” Cybele comments, and the completely innocuous words seem to take on a different tenor when she turns a look that could melt wax on the two men. “It wasn’t very kind to leave me stranded alone here and give me _such_ detailed reports.”

“You asked for them,” Kozmotis retorts, and Sandy knows he’s not the only one who notices the slight hitch in the General’s breath when Cybele takes two steps forward, closing the distance between them.

Her eyes flick down, and she licks her lips, apparently without thinking. “Clearly I’m not the only one who’s eager,” she teases gently, and licks the tip of her index finger, pressing it to Kozmotis’ lips. “Well, I won’t keep you waiting long. Strip.” There’s something commanding in her tone, something it would be unthinkable to disobey, and Sandy can’t blame Koz for the slightly-strangled moan that escapes him at the sound of her words.

“You too,” she continues, catching Sandy by his ascot and drawing him in close enough to catch a whiff of her perfume. It’s something light and sweet and strong, and he decides he’ll blame the perfume for the way his head reels, rather than the heat of her breath against his neck as she whispers into his ear. “You look very dapper, but I want to see you naked.”

It feels as though he’s just swallowed a mouthful of cotton. Sandy’s only too glad to comply, because his clothes all suddenly seem slightly too warm and too tight. The appraising looks he gets from both of the Pitchiners are enough to make him flush again, starlight-bright from his cheeks and shoulders and anywhere he curves, plump stomach and thighs and just a little from his stirring cock.

“I should have known you’d choose the most beautiful person in the fleet,” Cybele says, casually resting an arm around her husband’s bare shoulders and looking Sandy greedily up and down. “You selfish thing.”

“Selfish?” Koz’ smile is softened not at all by the loss of his severe uniform. “I’m sharing with you, aren’t I?”

Cybele shakes her head, lightly running her fingers along her husband’s collarbone, down over his chest. “Greedy, then.” She gives one sharp shove, and Koz stumbles backwards, landing against the wall. “We’ll have to teach you a lesson. Sandy, would you please restrain my husband?”

Sandy glances to Koz for his approval, and nearly bites through his tongue when Koz lazily lifts his arms above his head, crossing his wrists, smiling like a cat who’s got both the cream and the canary. “Don’t be shy, Sanderson.”

If Sandy responds a little too enthusiastically, neither Kozmotis nor Cybele complain. Bands of stardust lash out, wrapping around Koz’ wrists, winding around and between his legs, binding him in place. He tugs against them, testing their resistance, before relaxing with a sigh that no one would mistake for disappointment.

Cybele isn’t satisfied until she’s tested his bonds for herself, tucking fingers between flesh and stardust, ignoring the way Koz’ breathing grows heavier and more strained with every touch, heedless of the way he shivers at the lightest of brushes. She runs a hand along one shining strand, barely grazing the skin of his stomach, before turning back to Sandy with an appreciative look. “Excellent work. You must have practiced this.”

Sandy can’t really deny it. He also can’t really deny that he loves to see Kozmotis like this, wrapped up like a present and riding the edge of desperation. And judging from the way Cybele smiles, Sandy’s not doing a very good job of trying to hide it.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get to him,” she says to Sandy with another dangerous wink, and Kozmotis groans, long and deep. “Oh, don’t be like that, you’ve had Sandy all to yourself for _months_. I want a turn.”

After that, the kiss really shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it does anyway. Or perhaps what’s truly surprising is that Sandy finds he’s as eager to kiss her, to touch her, as he is her husband; that her tongue is as talented as Kozmotis’, if her taste is a little spicier, a little sharper; and when she takes a handful of his buttocks and _squeezes_ , Sandy is suddenly acutely aware that while he is bare as the day he was formed, Cybele is still fully clothed.

She pulls back, breathless, with a triumphant look. “Sandy, darling, would you please help me out of this dress?”

Sandy wasn’t wrong; she _is_ wearing complicated corsetry underneath her stylish gown. It takes longer than he’d expect to strip her down entirely, especially since she insists he use his teeth. Somehow, knowing that Kozmotis’ eyes are on them, that he is _right there_ and yet unable to touch, makes the whole situation charged somehow, filled with crackling anticipation, and Sandy realizes he’s putting on a show, drawing it out as much as he’s able. By the time Cybele finally lets him kiss her again, there isn’t so much as a stitch of clothing left on her and Sandy is beginning to feel as desperate as Kozmotis clearly is.

“I think we’ve all waited more than long enough,” Cybele gasps, once Sandy has to come up for air, and he’s so grateful that he leans in and kisses her again.

…

A week of shore leave, Sandy decides, is certainly not enough.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For another prompt.
> 
> _We all know what happened to Pitch’s daughter, but what became of her mother? Was she killed by Fearlings? Childbirth? Disease? I’d love to see a drabble/oneshot/story exploring the fate of Pitch’s wife (assumably he had one if he had a daughter)and how her loss impacted him, or perhaps is still impacting him._

_Dearest;_

_This posting is, if possible, even duller than the last. We’re so far removed from the front lines here that people don’t really understand how the war is being fought, or even why. One of the villagers (a woman, I think, although I’m fairly certain that the Pleiadians have at least three sexes, and possibly four) was even so bold as to ask me whether it wouldn’t be better for everyone in the long run to leave well enough alone. Clearly, she’s never had a son killed in the aether by dream pirates, or a child snatched from their bed and drained by a fearling. It took everything I had not to tell her that you were fighting so that she never does._

_Sera misses you, as always, but she seems to like our new house. Well, I say ‘house’, but it’s really more of a nest. The trees here are enormous, ten times taller than the tallest back home, and the people who live here have set up a most ingenious system of treehouses and rope bridges in the canopy. They have entire cities leagues up in the air, and hydroponic gardens in the upper branches, where the plants can catch the sunlight. They hardly ever venture down to the ground. The head of the research facility mentioned to me that there are legends of dangerous beasts that live below, but none of his workers have ever come across anything more harmful than something that resembled an overlarge slug. I’ll be joining an expedition down to the surface next week, so let’s hope that the stories are just that: stories._

_We are settling in just fine. Our daughter has taken to clambering all over the trees like she was born here. Last week she made her way all the way up to one of the gardens, and when I returned from the facility she was nowhere to be found. Everyone got a good scare that day! I’ve told her to make certain she tells someone where she’s going when she next takes it into her head to go exploring, as I’ve no illusions that I could make her stop running off altogether. She gets so bored and so lonely without either her father or mother around, and I swear she’s inherited your recklessness. I just hope she doesn’t get herself into any scrapes that the cleverness she also inherited from you can’t get her out of._

_Enclosed find a picture of Sera in our new home. Yes, the floor is supposed to look like that, and no, neither of us has fallen through. It’s surprisingly sturdy, actually, and it has to be light and springy to stand up to high winds. If they build their tree-homes too rigid, the homes will take the pressure up to a certain point, and then snap clean in two._

_I would love to ask you more about last week’s attack, but I know you can’t divulge such details in as insecure a communication as a letter. Please know that I have had you in my thoughts, and will continue to do so. They tell us such a lot of things, ‘to keep morale up’, but the more I hear the more certain I am that this war will not be a short one._

_Please, please, take care of yourself. ~~Please come back safely.~~_

_As much love as there is light in the cosmos,_

_Iliana_

_…  
_

_Dearest;_

_I overheard today that the front is moving closer to us and, I will admit, my first thought was that I might see you again. Selfish, I know, not to mention impossible. Still, I have to wonder when we will see you. If what I’ve heard is true, if you are being pushed back towards our little haven, then I assume leave is out of the question for the time being._

_Sera has made a friend! The – I will say ‘lady’ here, but really we have no proper words for the Pleiadians and their systems – the lady who tends the gardens atop our tree has gotten so used to our little spiderape climbing up to bask in the sun and watch the plants, that she has practically adopted our Sera. In fact, Sera spends more time above than she does at home. Our daughter is growing up far too quickly. Sometimes I wish I could just freeze her at this age, before she grows old enough to push us both aside and step out on her own. Then again, we’d never get a moment’s peace! She’s been pestering me to take her along when we make trips to the floor or up to unexplored parts of the canopy. I’ve tried to tell her that we’re only cataloguing species, and that we really see nothing new, but she would not be dissuaded until I asked our gardener friend to teach Sera a thing or two about growing plants under difficult conditions. I hope it will keep her engaged while I have to be away. It’s not horrendously dangerous work that we do, but one can never know what kind of aggressive, carnivorous being one might encounter next. And that’s_ without _the risk of falling!_

_Speaking of my work, we’ve found three creatures this week which none of my team had ever seen the likes of before. Two – the spiny, round one with ears almost as big as its whole body, and the spindly-legged one as long as it is tall – have names in the Pleiadians’ language, but the third – a creature curled almost into a circle, with a protruding, knobbly spine and long tail with a bone club on the end – even they have never seen before. The lead researcher has named it a garrula, after his wife. It seems romantic to me, as a field researcher and speciologist, but I have to wonder how she will take it. After all, it wouldn’t be very flattering to be compared to such a creature (although, I will own, the garrula is really quite lovely in its own unusual way)._

_I promise not to name any hideous creatures after you._

_As much love as there are stars in the sky,_

_Iliana_

_…  
_

_Dearest;_

_I heard about what happened to the_ Inspiration _. There are no words I could say that could make it hurt less. I am so very proud of you and so very sorry. My bright brave Kozmotis, please, don’t blame yourself. I know you will anyway, but please try not to, for my sake and Sera’s if not for your own. You do so much good, and someday I hope you’ll see it._

_I wish I could report good news to raise your spirits, but I’m afraid things have grown rather grim here of late. We can hear cannonfire and see the occasional phosphor flare, now, after the suns set. Last week a skirmish overhead dropped debris on two gardens, wounding one of the gardeners and killing almost all of the plants. Things will be rather lean for another moon or so, now._

_Interestingly, I have discovered that the gardeners are thought of among the Pleiadians as set apart from ordinary ideas of gender; they are considered to be ‘like the trees’ in that they support the life that supports the people, and like the trees, they are genderless and sexless. I think if I were not already a student of animal and plant life, I would want to study people, and all the different ways they live and set up society and –_

_It’s no use. I can’t focus. I can’t think of anything, really, but what you must be going through. Sera’s worried too, but she tries not to let me see. She gets that from you as well, you know. I certainly never taught her to put on a brave face to protect the ones she loves._

~~_I wish I were as brave as you are. I just want to run away. I just want you here._ ~~

_~~I wish this war were over.~~ _

_You are and have always been my hero. You will always be my hero. Don’t ever forget that._

_As much love as there are leaves on a tree,_

_Iliana_

_…  
_

_General Pitchiner_

_We regret to inform you that as of yesterday, your wife the Lady Iliana had still not been located among either the survivors or the dead of the Pleiades raid. In accordance with procedure, she will be assumed to have been lost and her records will be terminated. Please make arrangements for the filing of the will._

_We deeply regret your loss._

_Best regards_

_…  
_

There is a voice, one voice that he knows will drive him mad long before the others can. A voice that borders on familiar. A voice from the other side of the door.

A trick. It can’t be anything else. He won’t let himself think of anything else it _could_ be.

“ _Dearest…_ ”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another prompt.
> 
> _yes, yes, there’s about a gajillion adaptations of Tam Lin to fic, but it’s one of my favourite tropes and the transformation sequence would work SO WELL with Pitch(iner) and the shadows_
> 
> All poetical excerpts come from [here.](http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch039.htm)

_Janet has kilted her green kirtle_

_A little aboon her knee,  
_

_And she has broded her yellow hair  
_

_A little aboon her bree,  
_

_And she is to her father’s ha,  
_

_As fast as she can hie.  
_

…

It’s an old story, though younger than she. Old as the hills, they say, and forget that the hills are older even than their long memories.

Stories change, stories mutate, stories adapt and survive. She knows adaptation, she knows survival, but she knows too that the bones of a story do not change. There has always been a forest. There has always been a crossroads.

Stories have no age, not really, not truly. No one can say for certain when they were born; no one can say for certain when they will pass out of memory. Stories are not alive, and so they can never die.

It must be Halloween. Fitting.

All she has to do is catch him. All she has to do is keep him.

It is all she has tried to do for a long, long time. Some things are easier dreamed than done.

…

_‘I had taen out that heart o flesh,_

_Put in a heart o stane.’_

…

The moon shines down full and fat and fair. She wishes it would hide its silver face. But then, is a story really a story if there is no one to listen?

No fairy court attends him, no queen hangs her bright arms about his neck, but they have stolen his eyes and his heart nonetheless. This is no time for hate, no time for aught but love, but oh, she could hate if she had a mind to. If she had a heart to.

It is Halloween, and the Nightmare King rides.

His steeds all are black, and the only gold they wear is in their eyes. She knows him anyway. She would know him if her eyes were blinded and her ears stopped, if the moon hid its shameful face and all the stars ceased to shine. She would know him in any shape and any guise. She needs no signs, no telltale marks, no careful words of warning. She is older than the hills and older than the story.

She pulls him down, and holds him fast.

…

_But hold me fast, and fear me not_

…

She holds him as she has held him through the ages, as tight in her arms as in those most precious and fewest of memories. She holds him as he tears at her, shifts and changes in her grip from the form she knows best through a thousand thousand others, beasts and beings from the depths of the nightmare of something far older and stranger than humanity. She holds him as the doors open and the dark smothers the stars, as the cold depths of space try to pluck him from her, turn him on her, burn her hands. She clings to him for dear life as the maelstrom roars around her, not of her own making, and remembers and remembers and _remembers_. She can remember enough for both of them.

She does not look up.

She does not look up until the howls and whispers fall silent, until the wind that is not a wind dies down, until stillness falls like a cloak upon everything and muffles the world. She does not look up until the creep of cold along her spine reminds her who she holds in her arms. She does not look up, but when she does, his eyes burn like embers.

And at long last, she lets go.

…

_I’ll do to you nae harm._

…

The moonlight bathes them both like the clearest well-water.

He whispers her name, and his voice is hoarse. He raises one hand, as though he can’t quite believe the evidence of his senses, and cups her cheek gently as a kiss.

And Hell, she thinks, can pay its own tithe.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted.
> 
> _What if Pitch had a reason for everything that happened in the movie?_
> 
> _Yes, he slipped up when the fearlings made him think his daughter was in danger, and yes it cost him his humanity. But that was only one battle, not the war._
> 
> _All these long centuries, the Nightmare King has been guarding the fearlings. Insuring they do not break free and rampage across the land. Only now their prison is weakening, and he does not have the power to fix it, not anymore._

He spends a long time dreaming in the dark.

He has to keep reminding himself that this was what he’d gambled for, and the gamble has paid off. If the Lunanoffs – He doesn’t let himself think about it, doesn’t let himself think about whether they’ve been forced to give their lives to stop the menace he’s let himself become.

It was supposed to be _better_ , once the war was won. He was supposed to be unbreakable, he’s practically _legendary_ for never losing a fight, never backing down. Even though that was never true, a voice he wishes wasn’t his whispers into his thoughts; how many men has he lost over the long, long years of grinding war? And in the end, oh, in the end…the doors had been strong enough, but that didn’t matter, because he hadn’t.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this, with him battling the monsters for his own body, killing himself just to plant the idea that they should stop attacking unprotected, populated planets o n the fringes of the galaxy. It wasn’t supposed to end with them deciding to go after the Lunanoffs instead.

It wasn’t supposed to end with the young Tsarevich orphaned and alone, stuck in orbit over a small blue world which has become the new prison planet. It wasn’t supposed to end with a star-boy he knows by sight, if not by name, perhaps lost in the overwhelming dark that pumps like blood through the chambers of his heart. It wasn’t supposed to end with the creatures freezing in his bones, coiling into sluggish sleep, vainly trying to protect themselves from the brilliant light that eats at the heart of them.

It was supposed to be better.

Kozmotis lets his eyes close, and the earth draws closed over his head.

…

When he wakes, he can _move_.

He rises, and the dark rises with him, fearlings coiling out of sleep and back into the interstices of bone and sinew and thought, but something has changed. Their grip is tenuous, their actions and impulses scattered. They are not the organized, single-minded entity that had wreaked havoc on entire arms of the galaxy. They are barely strong enough, barely focused enough, to blink without Kozmotis’ say-so, and for the first time since he felt their caress in the inside of his skull, Kozmotis dares to hope.

There isn’t much he can do, not like this, not trapped under his own skin, but he can at least try to finish the task he thought he’d failed at so long ago. He can feel the fearlings gathering strength, knows it when they turn his face skywards to the cavern opening that has sprung up overhead and the trail the star-boy left behind him as he made his escape, and yet they’re still so much weaker than they were. Kozmotis doubts, even if the ship they’d taken over hadn’t been destroyed, that they would have been able to return to their destruction of the stars.

And he knows that he will make certain they never will.

After all, he is still their jailer.

…

It takes Kozmotis far too long to realise that their long imprisonment under the earth hasn’t only weakened the Fearlings.

It takes him just as long to realise he’s let them seduce him, influence him, yet again. A few stray regrets sneak in, _if only we hadn’t been so certain of our victory, if only the Golden Army hadn’t been so quickly decommissioned, if only we’d worried just a_ little _about what might happen if the prison failed_ , and before he knows it half of the little blue globe is cowering in terror of demons and plagues and beings that will snatch you in the night. To be fair, far fewer children drown, far fewer travelers lose themselves in marshes, fewer fall to bandit attacks along darkened roads. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for the Guardians, as the little band of heroes who’d granted him a brief reprieve from his private war have come to call themselves.

They’re right. The glut of fear, no matter how well-intentioned, has only made the creatures that have bound themselves into his bones stronger. So he fights them, of course. By now there’s nothing else he can do.

It doesn’t seem to make much of a difference. And he’s privately grateful when the Guardians beat him down again, when they lock him away in the hollow of the Earth’s core. (Not resentful. Not angry. He is not. He is _not_.)

…

It doesn’t last.

It never does.

But this time, the fearlings have _learned_. They’ve spent so long in his head that tactics, strategy, are no longer foreign and meaningless concepts to them. And this time, even the moonlight doesn’t seem to be enough to stop them in their tracks.

Kozmotis has to do something, something to force them to show their hand, before he fails again. Before the prison walls crumble. Before _he_ crumbles. After all, it’s been _so_ long, so long alone and without any support, any understanding, even so much as a kind word.

Besides, perhaps he _wouldn’t_ have cut such a swath across the Golden Age if its people had only let themselves keep a healthy fear of their old enemies. Perhaps a few little nightmares won’t do that much damage. Perhaps this time he’ll be able to keep them in check. And perhaps –

_They really have spent so long in his head._


	9. Chapter 9

When they say “falling”, they usually mean it metaphorically. What no one ever considers is that perhaps it _felt_ like falling, like the earth crumbling underfoot, like the rug yanked from beneath you, like the void opening up beneath your feet. The burn of speed, the faint nauseating tug of gravity momentarily thwarted, the roar of displaced air and displaced self, spinning, tangling, the ground rushing up from a world of dolls and toys to become large and real and oh, so solid.

It isn’t the fall that kills you. It’s hitting the ground.

You left a crater, when you did, not just a crater but a bullet-wound in the fragile skin of this delicate and unbreakable little backwater world. You punched yourself into the earth, straight into rock, curdling it with the heat of your entry through the atmosphere. A molten monument to a defeat, a disaster, nothing anyone would erect a statue for.

The empty husks of what was once a world are monument enough.

But what was it like, falling? Where gravity’s pull is faint enough to relinquish its relentless grasp, where the vacuum fills your lungs like water and drowns you the more quickly? (They say I abhor a vacuum. They are wrong. Wishing to fill something is not loathing. Hatred, at most, that force on the opposite side of love, that inextricable attraction, drawing two opposing forces together instead of levering them apart.) What was it like, weightlessness? What was it like, the burn of friction on entry, the cool slide of momentum through the dark until everything you reached towards was nothing but a bright spot on an undefined horizon?

You would plant your feet so firmly against the wood, against the metal, of your ship, your home, your ballast, that I used to think nothing could shake you, sway you, topple you. You would stand like the oldest of forests, rooted, grounded, so firm in the earth that you could, you must, stand a thousand years and never break. I wanted to be that, once, wanted that kind of solid surety of what lay beneath my feet. Now I know that it is a thousand thousand miles of soil and rock and bone and molten heat and then nothingness, once again. The world spins weightless, falling into the sun, in slow controlled curves, spiraling closer with every millennium. Even with my roots buried deep enough to wrench out the core I can’t stop it falling. Nothing can.

One day the heart will collapse. One day flame will scour us clean, devour this little, this great world whole, will leave not so much as ash. One day, long past the time when there is anyone to say what it is, the dust of our lives will accrete, combine with the dead ash of stars and the ice of comets to build a new little world which will fall, over millennia, over eras, into its own star.

I do not know whether either of us will be there to see it.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a prompt: _Can we see your version of how Kozmotis met his wife?_

“Oh, he’s righteous all right. A righteous _ass_. Did you hear about what he said to the Kochabian ambassador? And at the Lunanoff’s ball, no less!”

“ _I_ heard that he had to be escorted from the ballroom because he downed half a flask of the finest solar flares and then challenged the Tsar himself to a duel _right on the dance floor_.”

A flurry of mingled scandalized gasps and muted giggles followed this particular exaggeration. It was only through an enormous effort of will that Kozmotis managed to keep a straight face. Only another hour of this dinner and he’d be back to the barracks, away from gossipy Constellar debutantes and idiotic ministers and royals whose glittering fantasy world was so far removed from the reality outside their spheres that if a Nightmare Man had suddenly burst in they would probably only scold it for rudeness and insist it not return until it was appropriately dressed -

"You look tense.”

It took Kozmotis a moment to realise that _this_ female voice was addressing him. He turned a little too sharply, into the teeth of a smile that was just slightly too wide to be polite. “I beg your pardon?”

“You look tense,” the woman the smile belonged to repeated, her eyes roving up and down interestedly. Kozmotis knew that he was far from well-versed in the manners and mannerisms of the upper crust, but he was fairly sure that she was being alarmingly forward. He wasn’t sure he minded. “I can hear them too. I think they mean to be heard. You’re something of a legend at court, you know, but it wouldn’t be _polite_ to just walk up and ask you whether you really drew a pistol on the count of Urodelus after he called the lower ranks ‘cannon fodder’.”

"And I suppose this is your way of asking without appearing rude enough to actually ask?” Kozmotis retorted, but rather than being discouraged, the woman’s smile only grew.

“I see now where your reputation comes from,” she answered, effectively dodging the question. “I suppose we’re all so used to careful political maneuvering that a little forthrightness seems…unsporting. You’ve robbed me of the opportunity to play word games with you.”

“Hm.” She wasn’t bad-looking, Kozmotis realised, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed her before. The ethereal quality that so many of the court seemed to prize was conspicuously absent from her imposing frame, but her chestnut curls and the spark of mischief in her sea-blue eyes glittered and shone more than the stars above the atmosphere. “Well, there’s an hour left of dinner. I’d prefer word games to sitting silent and trying not to let the dinner conversation spoil the food.”


	11. Chapter 11

They hardly saw the spectral boy anymore. Sandy knew he must have his own reasons; Sandy himself, after all, had spent an immeasurable amount of time asleep after his own disaster, so he perfectly understood the urge to withdraw. It didn’t stop him from worrying. He knew that there wasn’t any real reason to - Nightlight was far, far older than he looked, and wiser than he sometimes acted - but, while the Guardians were good friends, and their friendship had been tested by fire, most of them just did not understand what it meant to have lived so long and lost so much. Sandy did not fancy the idea of losing one of the few remaining people who did.

He should have realised that Pitch Black might feel the same way.

 

Still, it came as a surprise when just a few scant years after that disastrous Easter, Sandy stepped out of a window and nearly tripped over the Boogeyman. Pitch scrambled away as Sandy tried to regain his bearings, conjuring a short whip and preparing to strike, ignoring the sudden twinge between his shoulderblades. “Sandman! I promise, I wasn’t trying to spy. It’s a complete coincidence that our paths happened to cross, I _assure_ you.”

Somehow, this was less than reassuring. Sandy crossed his arms, giving Pitch his best look of deep disbelief, ears open for the sounds of approaching nightmares. He wouldn’t be caught with his back exposed again.

Pitch looked hurriedly from side to side, almost as though there was something he was _more_ scared of that Sandy, which wouldn’t do at all. Sandy gave his whip a good _crack_ , which drew all of the fallen Nightmare King’s attention abruptly back to him. “All right, that was a lie. Yes, I’ve been following you - wait wait _wait_!”

Sandy paused with his arm drawn back, one eyebrow cocked, quickly losing patience.

For a moment, Pitch looked like he was about to snarl, to spit some poisonous remark that would quickly bring the Sandman to the end of that strained patience. But what actually came out of his mouth was so unexpected that, instead, Sandy nearly dropped his whip.

“The heartworm showed up and got rid of those _damned_ nightmares, not that I ever _asked_ for his help, and then demanded that I come find _you_.” Pitch pushed himself awkwardly to his feet. “Apparently now your precious friends are setting prices for the lives they save. How heroic.”

The words, though barbed, didn’t find their mark. Sandy simply waved a question mark into being, gesturing for Pitch to go on. He had a feeling there was something he still wasn’t getting.

Pitch sighed, smoothing down his robes, ran a hand through his hair, and then, staring resolutely at a point behind Sandy and a little above his left shoulder, said, in a loud, clear, declamatory voice, “I’m sorry I shot you when your back was turned, killed you, and made off with your dreamsand.” An edge crept into his voice as he added, seemingly to no one in particular, “There! Is that good enough for you?”

The answer came in the form of a tinkling laugh, like starlight made sound, a laugh that Sandy hadn’t heard in far too long. He felt his own face light up in answer to the glow that rose over the lip of the roof, silver-blue and gold mingling in the evening air. Nightlight’s slender, spectral form bobbed up like a cork, and Sandy gladly and gratefully drank in the sight of the boy he hadn’t seen for - moon and stars, it had to have been _centuries_.

Sandy held out both arms, but Nightlight had already turned to face Pitch, a huge mock-frown creasing his boyish features. Some unspoken argument seemed to take place, and then Pitch spat, “All right, _fine,”_ turning back to Sandy with a scowl written across his face. "And I was a fool to break off our truce, to push you into siding with the Guardians. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Nightlight’s frown didn’t soften. Pitch glared at him for an interminable moment, and just when Sandy was about to throw his hands in the air and demand to know just what was going _on_ , the Nightmare King looked up and, at last, met Sandy’s eyes. Sandy just had time to realise that it wasn’t hatred or resentment that was flickering in Pitch’s eyes before Pitch looked away again, directing his words to the open night air. “I miss you,” he ground out, sounding for all the world as though he would rather be chewing rusty nails. Even so, Sandy didn’t miss the slight softening of his scowl, the way the last word trailed off.

Even if Sandy had had words, he would have found himself speechless.

Nightlight, on the other hand, seemed to have recognised his cue, and flung himself through the air to wrap both arms affectionately around Pitch’s neck, ignoring the Boogeyman’s half-hearted protests. With a huge, ever-so-slightly mischievous grin, he dragged Pitch over to where Sandy was still standing slightly shell-shocked, halfway releasing Pitch in order to wrap an arm around Sandy as well. Sandy gladly melted into the embrace he hadn’t felt for far too long, pressing a golden kiss to the spectral boy’s cheek, just at the corner of his mouth. Nightlight laughed delightedly and pulled Sandy in for a proper kiss, before both of them turned to the still-reluctant Pitch and, by unspoken agreement, covered him in enough starlight smooches to silence his cursory protests.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another prompt.
> 
> _Decided to suggest a mean one: What if Kozmotis Pitchiner had not been so easy to trick? What if his daughter had come to see him and the Fearlings had tricked her into opening the door to their prison? How would this happen and what would the consequences be?_

The cabin was full of shifting shadows, swaying with each creaking roll of the ship on the fringes of the gravitational pull of the black hole that had not so long ago been a proud and noble star. It was impossible to tell, in the dancing dark, whether anything lay in wait for the small party who had dared to venture into the depths of the stolen and corrupted ship.

They were here because of the black hole, and because of the six worlds that had spun in delicate orbit around it, and because of the eight worlds in the next solar system, once bright and lively, now blasted and scoured and inhabited by only shadows – and worse. They were here because of the ship, its Constellar colours shredded to rags, the name carved into the stern barely visible through the shroud of oppressive dark that dimmed its golden sheen. They were here because of the hollow, artificial iron world drifting aimlessly through the void, massive doors nevertheless dwarfed by its bulk hanging open, useless, on their hinges. But most of all, they were here because of what they knew must be waiting in the shadows.

The sounds of battle overhead sounded muffled and distant from inside, but a shiver ran through each of the four members of the party at the sound of what could only be the scream of one changed. The knowledge that there were fates worse than death to be faced here turned the youngest of the party’s bones to lead, heavy and cold, and she scanned the skittering shadows with renewed vigour. There – in the corner, was that just a drapery, a piece of furniture given life by the light and her fickle eyes? There – by the ceiling, was that just the reflection of the softly-swaying chandelier, or was something scuttling along the exposed boards?

She was staring hard at the chandelier when she heard the voice.

It sounded human – at least, it wasn’t the hiss of a Fearling. In fact, it was rather pleasant, deep and plummy, humming a tune that sounded eerie only because it didn’t belong here, in this darkness, literally under the feet of men fighting for their lives. She knew it, of course. Everyone in the party did. The sweet little song about nightlights was one that every parent sang to their child.

She turned to her commanding officer, and caught only a sliver of his face illuminated as it turned from puzzled to determined. He drew his sword with the softest of silken noises, and the other three followed suit, raising weapons that glowed dimly in the sharp-edged darkness.

The commanding officer took one deliberate step forward, and the lullaby abruptly cut off.

The youngest of the party realized she was holding her breath, and tried to release it as silently as possible. The soft creak of a door hinge was like a blast of icy wind on the back of her neck, cold and unexpected and setting her shivering. And then, a sliver of light skidded across the room and revealed that they were no longer alone. A figure stood by the door against the back wall, the light glinting off of battered armour and illuminating a hawkish profile that all four of the party knew well.

For a moment, the youngest of the party forgot about breathing altogether.

Her commanding officer was, at length, the first to speak, his sword growing brighter with the elevated danger. “General Pitchiner, sir?” The words were respectful, but cautious, and the youngest of the party fought not to bite through her lip. Everyone knew where the General had been when the prison planet had fallen. No one had known just what had happened to him, though. Until now.

The once-leader of the Golden Armies turned to face them, and she had to bite down on her knuckles to prevent a scream. In profile, he had seemed the man she’d caught glimpses of on parade, perhaps a little older and a little more tired. But head-on, she could see that half of his proud, strong-featured face, half of his powerful frame, had _melted away_ , seething shadow filling the gap and supporting one luminous, golden Fearling eye.

He looked them over in a glance, eyes lingering on their weapons, and the discontinuity between the paternalistic frown on the good half of his face and the jagged grin that split the shadowy half nearly in two brought a sudden burst of bile into the youngest of the party’s mouth. “Sera’s just gone to bed. I hope you’ll do me the favour of dying quietly.”

That was all the warning they got before he pulled a scythe longer than he was tall from the shadows. Before any of them could move, the point had lodged in the throat of the man nearest the door, and in the dark it was impossible to tell if the dark stain that bloomed across the front of his uniform was blood or simply black corruption spreading from the wound.

There wasn’t time to think. There were only the shifting, disorienting shadows, the near-silent hiss of the scythe, the sparks that flew from moonbright blades, the pounding of terrified hearts and ragged breathing and the occasional choked cry. They should have been able to overpower a single man easily, but when that single man was even the husk of General Pitchiner, they found themselves outnumbered one to three. It was only through sheer luck and terror-driven adrenaline that any of them managed to land a blow.

The youngest of the party wasn’t quite sure what happened – she’d dodged a swing from that deadly scythe, ducked at what she thought was the glint of light from a sword, and suddenly she was face-to-face with the corrupted General, staring into that round, lamplike eye and the silver glint of the other and seeing nothing left that was human.

She brought her sword up, and the world went silent.

There was barely time for her to take in the sight of the body laid out at her feet, her own blade piercing the heart, barely time for her to notice the way the shadows dispersed leaving only half a corpse behind, before the sound of a creaking door broke through her cocoon of silence. Light footsteps padded against the bare boards of the deck, and the youngest of the party turned as though dragged in by a black-hole gravity.

The figure which stood framed against the eerie bluish glow from the room beyond could have been called a young woman, once. Now, she was a monster, and her long-but-lovely features and simple dark gown couldn’t hide the roiling shadows that flowed from her fingertips, tangled in her masses of dark hair, coiled around her feet like playful puppies. Her eyes burned like lanterns in the dark, flashing gold as coins when she looked from the body of the once-General up to the three who had come to destroy her.

“You killed him,” she said, and her voice was flat and emotionless and somehow burgeoning, like a choir speaking at once, in one voice.

The youngest of the party looked down at the sword in her hand, and saw that it was glowing like a star about to go supernova. The creature in the doorway almost seemed to be growing in size and stature; she was certainly blocking out more of the light than she had been moments before. Even the occasional flicker of disorienting brightness had stopped, plunging them all into a darkness that was broken only by the desperate flares of their blades. “You _killed_ him,” the Nightmare Queen repeated, and now her voice was like the howling of a tempest, a thousand voices screaming behind her own stern alto. It didn’t die when her mouth stopped moving, either, the dark around them picking up the chorus of pained and angry screeches.

By the time they fell silent, the youngest of the party could see nothing but the faintest of flickers from her own blade in front of her face and the gleam of the Nightmare Queen’s brilliant eyes, like twin stars in the dark, captivating and almost soothing, somehow. In the cradling arms of terror, she lowered her sword, transfixed as any small animal in the face of a predator that could – that _would_ – ultimately devour it. There was no hope, no reason to fight. She was very small, and very weak, and the Nightmare Queen was absolute and terrible. All she could do was hope that it would end quickly.

“ _You killed my father_ ,” the Nightmare Queen hissed, and the last lights went out.

…

The Nightmare Queen stepped out of the cabin, heedlessly walking over the bodies strewn across the deck as she made her way to steerage. A scrap of crumpled, bloodstained cloth peeked from her fist, the only sign of the battle that had taken place below.

The captain of the ship turned to face her as she ascended the steps, cutting a quick, precise bow. In answer, she nodded, and he straightened up again, fixing huge golden eyes on her face.

_manymany fallen raids wherewhere_

She looked out over the expanse of space, the twinkle of the nearest star, around which, she knew, only dead planets hung. No one there to plunder, no one there to terrorize, no one there to turn. Nothing left to conquer, nothing left to destroy. The small fleet of ships that hovered just out of cannonball range, apparently waiting upon some signal to swarm in and begin the battle again.

Her upper lip curled in a derisive sneer, and her fist tightened on the scrap of cloth, one of the medals biting into the palm of her hand until inky black spread across it to mingle with the dark red of drying blood.

“We’ve hung around the fringes of this galaxy for far too long,” she answered, her voice clear and carrying across the deck to those of her soldiers who had not fallen, those who had become her soldiers in the battle, ringing out into the void. “It is time to take our due.”

The captain’s featureless face nevertheless managed to convey amusement. _manymany ships oursyes_

She inclined her head in agreement, just once. “Of course. Our enemies have an armada.” Her gaze flickered again to the ships lying in wait, to her own rather meager crew, and at last to the black hole. “We shall need some sort of advantage.”

The ships flying the Constellations’ colours began to creep forward, spreading out as they did, until a ring of bright vessels surrounded the small, dark one. She watched them carefully, gesturing for her own crew to hold their fire. She watched, and watched, until the cannons emerged, until she could see the whites of their eyes.

And she waved a hand.

The black hole erupted.

She didn’t watch the darkness pouring like tidal waves over her enemies, paid no attention to the tumult raging around the little dark ship, hardly noticing the screams and the few sparse blasts of cannonfire before the last few ships were swallowed by the freezing tide. She was too busy glaring at the tiny silver insignia stitched to the scrap of uniform coat that she had stolen from one of the miserable piles of ground meat that had once been bodies lying down in the cabin. A little silver crescent moon winked cheekily up at her, and she growled low in her throat, looking up at last to survey the devastation.

The fleet had not been tumbled to bits. On a few decks, desperate fighting still raged between swarms of Fearlings and a few unchanged survivors, but they were fighting a losing battle. The other ships were righting themselves, crews of black bodies pulling down the Constellar colours, and she felt a fierce smile steal across her face at the sight of black decay creeping across golden hulls.

_where wherewhere_

“Constellation Lunanoff,” she said, curling her hand closed around the scrap of cloth again. “They’ll _pay_ for my father.” She opened her hand, and a fine black dust fell to the deck. “I hear they have a son now. I wonder how _they’ll_ feel to lose someone they so dearly love?”


	13. Chapter 13

They think it was a sacrifice.

Or perhaps they think it was a mistake, a tragedy, an unwitting martyrdom. Perhaps they think you were forced into it, a victim of cruel circumstance.

They couldn’t be farther from the truth.

You’ve been through these paces so many times that your feet have worn a groove, not in the heavy iron floor, but into time itself, that heavy repeating mass that circles back again and again as they stare, morbid eyes trying to devise a way to save you and only forcing you to relive those few dreadful moments, that awful choice, no choice at all, that one wrong step, until the very weight of time feels like it’s drowning you.

There is no escaping this. You don’t know the language of fixed points, cruxes, junctions, key historical turning points, but you recognize the truth of it nonetheless. This happens. It doesn’t matter what accompanies it. This moment always happens, in infinite variations, variations you must live through. In every one, a sacrifice, a martyr, a fallen hero, a good man tricked, trapped, brought low by his own love.

Except this time. Because rather than suffer through it, rather than struggle against it, rather than buy into their idiot delusion that this repetition will be different because of some miniscule change, that this time they will get it right, you have had enough. This time will be different, but not because of _them_. Nothing will change.

Except you.

(You are, after all, the only thing that matters.)

The key feels lighter when you take it in hand, the lock clicks open as smoothly as the glide of your ship through frictionless space, and you wonder if this isn’t what is _meant_ by ‘getting it right’. If this is a fixed point, if you can be forced through the eye of this needle over and over again until your nerves are raw and you feel you’ve lived a thousand years without a moment’s sleep, then perhaps this is all that was ever meant to happen. All that ever _could_ happen.

The dark behind the doors that you throw wide agrees.

And, this time, does not drown you, does not destroy you, does not pummel you into submission, does not force you to keep fighting a battle that is already lost before it could begin. This time, it reaches out for you, not greedy, not snarling, almost curious, almost kind.

This time, it’s you who grasps hold of the dark.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A request for some fluff! _Cybele and Koz find out they're going to be parents._

Kozmotis tears into the communications room as though the place is on fire, followed closely by the cadet who’d been sent to fetch him from the bridge. “What’s the matter?” he barks at the engineer fiddling with the brass knobs and dials that represent absolute control over their one faster-than-light communication device. “Why is my _wife_ calling the ship?” This line is their only method of communication with command back on Lyra; for Cybele to be using it to get through to him means that whatever she has to say must be both urgent and terribly important.

“She didn’t say,” the engineer answers, and while her words are perfectly respectful, they’re shaded with frustration. “But she _insisted_ that she had to talk to you. And that it had to be now.” She turns quickly back to the machine, but not so quickly that Kozmotis doesn’t catch a glimpse of the disapproving look she gives him. He can’t bring himself to care. It feels like a giant hand is squeezing all the air out of his lungs, a desperate restlessness building just under his skin, and if he doesn’t get to speak to Cybele _now_ , hear her voice reassuring him that everything is all right, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

“Put her on,” he demands, and the engineer twirls a few dials with a soft exhalation that sounds unnecessarily sarcastic. A beam of golden light shoots up from the display before them, spreading out into a holographic image of one of the few people Kozmotis cares about more than his own life.

The first thing he notices, with a flood of relief that’s almost overwhelming, is that she’s smiling.

“Cybele,” he breathes, the terror subsiding at the sight of her, whole and well. “What is it? What’s the matter? Why did you call?”

Cybele only smiles wider, and for a moment ice scrapes through Kozmotis’ veins again, because her eyes are brimming with tears. And then, _finally_ , she speaks.

“Congratulations, Koz. You’re going to be a father.”


	15. Chapter 15

The icy wind that scours through Pitch’s lair, setting the hanging cages jangling and making his breath stand out against the air, is familiar by now, if no less unwanted. He doesn’t look up from the book in his hands at the clattering sound of wood against stone and the slight ‘oof’ that signifies Jack Frost’s graceless landing, pretending not to have heard. It does him little good, because in moments Frost is shouting out a greeting. “Pitch! Hey, guess what?”

“Frost,” Pitch answers neutrally, without raising his eyes from the printed page. Inwardly, however, he groans. The brat sounds excited about something, more so than usual. That can’t possibly bode well.

“You’re not _guessing_.” Pitch finally glances up, and stifles a less-internal groan at the huge grin that Jack wears. He’d surmised correctly; Jack is unusually excited about something, enough so that no trace of his usual mischief is left in his countenance.

With a sigh, Pitch turns back to his book. “No. I’m not. How very perceptive of you.”

“Come _onnnnnn_.”

“I never requested your company, Frost.”

“Really? Antarctica says otherwise.”

Pitch’s head snaps up, teeth bared in a snarl that causes even the usually-irrepressible Jack to drop the smile a few notches. “You made it very clear then that you wanted nothing to do with me. I suppose it was too much to hope that you actually meant it.” He turns back to the book, seething quietly, unable to take in a single word. Thankfully, the uncomfortable silence from where Frost was standing says that at least he’s suffering as well.

“I didn’t mean – You know that’s why I started visiting, right? I told you, I’m not going to help you scare little kids. That doesn’t mean that I’m going to leave you alone to rot.” The exuberance in Jack’s voice has dimmed, and the soft gusts of cooler air indicate that he’s swinging his staff back and forth, awkwardly. Pitch doesn’t deign to answer him. Maybe, if he keeps pretending to read and ignoring Jack, the brat will go back to wherever he goes when he isn’t down in Pitch’s lair causing trouble and leave Pitch _alone_. And maybe this time, he won’t come back.

(The thought absolutely does not make something in Pitch’s chest twist painfully.)

Unfortunately, a little peace and quiet seems to be too much to hope for.  The soft pad of bare feet against stone floors interrupt Pitch’s attempts to concentrate on his reading, until he grinds out an angry, “ _What_.”

Jack turns, his smile slowly returning. “Did you make all those cages just for the tooth fairies, or is that really your idea of interior decorating?”

Pitch lets out a long-suffering breath, carefully closing the book in his lap. “What. Did you come. To tell me.”

“Oh! Yeah. Well, uh, you remember my – my memories?” Jack stumbles only slightly over the words, but the sudden faint prickle of nervousness makes it very clear to Pitch that he’s mentally reliving last Easter. Pitch can’t help the small smile that creeps across his face – he might be too weak to kick Jack Frost out of his own domain _now_ , but to think he’d left such a lasting impression - !

“Like it was yesterday,” he drawls, with a smirk at the way Jack’s fists clench.

“Well, thanks for finding them,” Jack throws back at him, defiantly. “If you hadn’t, I’d still be thinking I was nobody before I was Jack Frost, instead of knowing who I was. What – _who_ – I died for.” He takes a deep breath, letting it out again slowly, filling the air immediately around him with the sharp, clean scent of snow. “And it gave me an idea. So I asked around, to see what I could find out.”

“And?” Pitch asks, archly. For no reason he can distinguish, this conversation is beginning to make him feel uneasy.

The smile that Frost gives him is small and genuine, with just a hint of excitement. “And I found out who you were. Who you _are_.”

The unease

 _boils over_.

“I know who I am,” Pitch spits. “If you really think it’s news to me, then you are sorely mistaken.”

“No, no, that’s not what I -” Jack half-skips over to the throne that Pitch _had_ been relaxing in and is now sitting in so rigidly that he feels as though he’s been turned to stone just like the edifice. “Before you were the Boogeyman. Didn’t you ever wonder -”

“I did _not_ , thank you.” The sound of tearing paper makes Pitch look down, to discover just how hard he was clutching the book. “I don’t need you barging in here to -”

“But you were a good guy!” Jack’s smile is effervescent, his voice bubbling like champagne; he doesn’t seem to have noticed the effect his words are having on Pitch, or if he does, he doesn’t seem to care. “Bet you never considered that, huh? You don’t have to wonder anymore, you don’t have to be alone down here anymore – now we can find out _why_. Now, listen, Tooth’s still got that – uh – souvenir she took from you last Easter, and I’m sure that once she knows what it’s for she’d be willing to help -”

“ _Frost_.”

The word is low, and not very loud, but Jack still stops mid-sentence, looking like he’s been slapped.

“What,” Pitch hisses, every word ringing like a bell in the cavernous underground hall and setting up an echoing chorus of whispers from the shadows wreathing the ceiling, “makes you think that I don’t remember?”

Jack opens his mouth, and closes it again. “Uh. But you said -”

“We’re _alike_. We are not the _same_.” Pitch rises slowly from his seat, to his full height and higher, until he looms over the insolent brat who _dares_ to come down here, again and again, taking advantage of his helplessness, mocking him with friendshipand _freedom_ \- !

Jack swallows, visibly, and his fear is a tiny flame, guttering with every second that passes with Pitch doing nothing more than glare. “I just wanted to help,” he says, at length.

“Did you.” Pitch lets himself relax, just slightly, just enough that he no longer towers over the boy. “You thought you would _help_ by dredging up that unfortunate memory? You thought you would _help_ by telling me that I don’t know my own purpose? You thought you would _help_ by _dissolving_ me to bring back a _good guy_?”

Jack actually flinches at the last words, and Pitch can’t quite find it in himself to feel sorry.

“And tell me, Jack,” he continues, and although the words have turned to honey they are no less barbed, “just what did they tell you about who I used to be? Did they give you the shorthand version? The one with the _hero_ who paraded his arrogance around like armour? I’m sure they mentioned that he was a general of war. Tell me, what does one usually do in a war? Or perhaps they made much of a daughter. Does she really deserve to be sacrificed to an ego the size of a black hole? She was a person, not a prop for determining the worthiness of the _Golden General_. And she deserved _far_ better than to be treated the way she was.”

Jack takes an involuntary step backwards, and quickly covers it by putting on an aggressive face. “I don’t believe you.”

“Believe what you like.” Pitch sighs, turning grudgingly aside. “But next time you try to decide who deserves to exist, _Jack_ , I suggest you refine your criteria for ‘good guy’.”

He leans down, picks up his book, and in two more steps is gone, disappearing into the shadows.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one warranting the 'Mature' rating.

Watching Nicholas work is a pleasure in itself.

The big man, all bluster and bombast, doesn’t quite _shrink_ when he loses himself in creation, but he does _focus._ It’s beautiful - no, _wonder_ ful _-_ even just to watch him, as he turns all of his intensity and energy in on a model the size of his thumb.

Or on a lover.

There is very little that Pitch loves more than having all of that energy, that intensity, that _inventiveness_ focused on himself. North’s huge, rough hands are capable of incredible precision, whether they’re working on a prototype of a new toy or playing over each sensitive spot on Pitch’s lean body. He’d never admit it aloud, but, proud as the Nightmare King is, and heady as it is to have the Cossack on his knees, it is _infinitely_ better to submit himself to North and let those hands do their work.

North can be rough, can be demanding, can be the fierce and enthusiastic bandit king, and Pitch will never admit how much he loves it, loves to be held down and fucked so ruthlessly that he’ll be finding new bruises for weeks afterwards. But North can also be gentle, surprisingly so, after what Pitch has seen of his swordfighting, and more careful than anyone would guess from his careless demeanour outside of the workroom or the bedroom. It can be glorious, to be treated like one of the toymaker’s beloved creations, handled like something precious, feeling small and cherished and _protected_. Ordinarily North’s size and complete self-assurance would feel threatening, ordinarily Pitch wouldn’t enjoy feeling dwarfed or vulnerable or out of control. But this is not the battlefield, and it feels strangely right to give himself over completely, knowing that North will not - perhaps _cannot_ \- take advantage of his weakness.

The realisation comes as a shock, startling Pitch out of his own head and back into the workshop. He _trusts_ Nicholas. When had _that_ happened?

“Pitch!”

The Nightmare King absolutely does not jump at the sudden exclamation, watching warily as North pushes his chair away from the table where he’s been working. “What?”

“Again you are thinking too much.” Pitch draws back slightly when North wraps large, warm arms around him, but quickly melts into the embrace. North’s whiskers tickle against his neck as the larger man whispers directly into Pitch’s ear, and a waft of peppermint and clean snow and something wild and musky turns his knees to water. “Perhaps you are needing distraction, da?”

“Please,” Pitch breathes, sucking in a breath when a warm, rough thumb strokes lightly over his exposed collarbone and brushes his robe aside, pushing it down over his shoulder. The air feels cold on the newly-exposed flesh, and the shock of North’s hot breath against his skin is a pleasant one. The kiss that follows comes as no surprise, but the rough bite into Pitch’s shoulder does, sending an electric thrill down his spine and straight to his cock. It’s going to leave a mark, Pitch can tell, a beautiful rose of a bruise that will mark him as _owned_ , and the thought makes him gasp as much as the warm, wet pressure of North’s mouth on his skin.

North chuckles into Pitch’s shoulder, vibrating against the Nightmare King’s collarbone and through his ribcage, before pulling away to plant another kiss on Pitch’s lips. “You seem eager,” he comments, as one strong arm slips down to grasp a handful of Pitch’s ass, pulling Pitch flush against him and grinding Pitch’s stirring cock up against his leg.

“I - _ah_ \- am, you great big -” Pitch’s sentence breaks off in a needy whine when North digs his fingers into Pitch’s ass and _squeezes_.

“What is it that you are wanting, Pitch?”

Pitch lets out another involuntary noise and wraps himself more tightly around North’s bulk, pressing his face into the softness of his beard and breathing in the scent of the man, sugar and spice and, underneath, something stronger and wilder, much like North himself. “You _know_ what I want,” he mumbles, and North laughs, thunderously, shaking them both.

“Pitch.” Nicholas’ voice is soft, kind, but when he steps back and looks Pitch over, his eyes are alight with the same gleam that fills them before a battle, or - a shiver runs through Pitch at the thought - or when he surveys a new treasure. “You must _tell_ me.”

The words are still soft, but now shot through with steel, an order if Pitch has ever heard one. He should bristle at this kind of treatment, he thinks; it should sting him, nettle his pride, not make him want to fall to his knees, to do whatever the man before him asks of him, to be _good_.

Should.

“Must I sit in Santa’s lap and tell him what I want for Christmas, then?” he snarks, instead, and licks his lips at the way North’s eyes go dark.

“It was not joke,” North says, darkly, leaning in towards Pitch, and Pitch is tall but somehow North seems taller, stronger, larger than life in every respect.

“What if I _want_ to sit in Santa’s lap?” Pitch says, meaning for it to sound cocky, self-assured, perfectly in control, but it comes out as barely a whisper, hardly more than a breath. For a moment, he thinks he’s pressed it too far, and part of him wants to push North that little bit farther, wants to be _punished_ , wants the Cossack to take all of his frustrations out on Pitch’s willing and obedient body.

But North only laughs again, before scooping Pitch up bodily and carrying him, like a doll, over to the armchair in the corner. “Well, if you ask _nicely_ ,” he says, mildly, and Pitch’s mouth goes dry at the way North looks down at him, “and if you are good boy, maybe you get what you want, hm?”

“I’ll be good,” Pitch promises, before his brain can stop the words from coming out, and his cock _throbs_ at the way North smiles.

“But you have been very -” North pauses, just long enough to set Pitch on his feet and settle himself down in the armchair. “ _Very_ naughty.”

“Then maybe I’ll just have to prove to you how good I can be,” Pitch answers, smoothly, drawing another laugh out of North.

“Will you?” North leans forward, and even from his seat in the armchair he seems, somehow, to tower over Pitch. “Get on knees, then, and start proving.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU where everybody is dating everybody and nothing hurts.

“ _There_ you are!”

Jack jumps up as Katherine drops down onto the couch next to him, only to be pressed firmly but gently back into his seat by Nightlight, who flashes him a conspiratorial grin before lightly settling into the couch on Jack’s other side.

“Uh, what’s this about?” Jack asks, dredging up a smile to cover the way his stomach drops. “ ‘Cause whatever it is, I didn’t do it. North’s elves are little terrors, have you -”

Nightlight’s sudden burst of laughter is bright and clear and joyful. Katherine’s laugh is too, her hand on Jack’s shoulder warm through the worn fabric of his hoodie, and Jack swallows down a sudden burst of bitter envy at the easy, thoughtless way she touches him. “ _That’s_ why you’ve been hiding?”

“Wh- hiding? I haven’t been _hiding_ ,” Jack argues, trying and failing to sound like the very idea is absurd. The snort that Katherine gives before he’s even finished the sentence makes it clear what she thinks of that. Jack glances over at Nightlight, hoping vainly for a little support, but the spectral boy (though not so much a _boy_ as Jack had imagined from the stories) only cocks an eyebrow and exchanges a sarcastic look with Katherine.

“You’ve been avoiding us – avoiding _everyone_ – all night.” Katherine sits back a little, turning so that she can look Jack full in the face. She’s not quite the little girl that Jack had expected, either; she looks young, perhaps in her late teens or early twenties, but her eyes and the twist of her smile tell a different story. “You were there when we arrived, and then you vanished, and no one’s seen you since.”

Jack laughs once as he turns to stare at the worn floorboards, wishing it didn’t sound so bitter. “Wow, I’m surprised anybody even noticed. You all seemed pretty content to catch up with each other. I mean, I know I can’t really compete with a couple hundred years’ worth of stories from sailing the galaxy -”

“Is that what you thought?” Katherine’s smile vanishes, and the look she shares with Nightlight is concerned. “We didn’t come back to _replace_ you.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, curling his fingers into the sleeves of his hoodie and wishing he could put the hood up without making this conversation more awkward than it already is. “ ‘Course not. You were here before me.”

He nearly jumps backwards over the couch when light, cool fingers, like mist and moonlight, catch him under the chin and gently tilt his face up to meet Nightlight’s thoughtful gaze. Jack tries to stop the blush that threatens to cover his face, with little success; frost scrolls over Nightlight’s fingers, and the spectral boy draws them back, blinking at the fine silver-white filigree with something like awe.

“Jack,” Katherine says, softly, and Jack turns a little too quickly to face her. “You’re a Guardian. You’re one of us. Even if some of us haven’t exactly been there for you…” She glances down at her hands, then back up at Jack. “We’re here _now_.”

Jack opens his mouth to respond, but nothing comes out around the unexpected lump that’s formed in his throat. He swallows once, hard, and manages a weak grin instead.

Katherine smiles back, though her grey eyes still look sad. “You don’t believe a word I just said,” she says, and it ends flat and final, not a question.

Jack shrugs, awkwardly, and Katherine shakes her head.

“Then let us show you,” she says, and reaches out to cup Jack’s cheek with one small, warm hand. Jack pulls away, only to find himself pressed back against Nightlight’s slim chest, deceptively strong arms curling around Jack in what he can only describe as an embrace.

“Wha -” Jack starts to ask, but it comes out as a squeak. His heart hammers against his ribcage as Katherine leans in closer, her other hand curling around the back of his neck as she gently presses her lips to his.

The kiss is soft, sweet, and utterly unexpected, and Jack’s brain stutters to a halt, unable to focus on anything other than the warmth of Katherine’s lips against his, the reassuring pressure of Nightlight’s arms around him and Katherine’s hand tangling in his hair, her scent of vanilla and crisp fall leaves mingling with Nightlight’s, like rain but somehow electric. It’s only when Katherine presses her tongue curiously against the seam of his lips that Jack’s brain kicks back into gear and he pulls away, jumping up off the couch, a dusting of fine ice crystals shedding from where the frost of his blush has spread down over his shoulders and across his sweatshirt.

It takes him a few tries to get his voice back. “Whoa, wha – What are you doing?”

He can feel both of their gazes, confused and a little concerned, like spiderwebs against his skin. “Jack, what do you -” Katherine starts to ask, and a nervous laugh bubbles unbidden out of Jack’s throat.

“Look, I’m really flattered, but, uh -” Nightlight cants his head to one side, fixing Jack with a look of intent concentration, and Jack’s train of thought quickly jumps the tracks. It takes him a moment to reassemble his thoughts. “Uh, I thought you two were…?”

Katherine’s brow furrows, and the look she and Nightlight exchange is quick and unreadable. “Yes, but – didn’t anyone explain to you how this works?”

“How _what_ works?” Jack asks, seeing only a mirror of his own confusion on their faces.

Katherine lets out a short, frustrated huff, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling as she pushes herself up off the couch. “They haven’t told you anything at all, have they.” Beside her, Nightlight rises to his feet as well, shaking his head with a wry smile.

“Anything about _what_?” Jack repeats, an edge of impatience creeping into his voice.

Katherine reaches out and grips Jack’s hand, pulling him forward before he can protest. “Come back to the party. _Somebody_ has a lot of explaining to do.”

…

North claps both huge hands together excitedly when Nightlight and Katherine steer Jack through the door. “Ah, there are guests of honour! And Jack! We have been missing you.” He starts forward, arms wide, but Katherine quickly steps between him and Jack.

“Why didn’t anyone tell him what being one of the Guardians means?” she asks, mildly, but with a firmness that suggests demanding is also an option. North takes a step back, glancing around the room at the other three, who all look as confused as he does.

“I _know_ what being a Guardian means,” Jack interrupts, before North or anyone else has a chance to answer, trying (though not too hard) to shake off Nightlight’s hand on his shoulder. A surge of tangled feelings comes with the memory of Pitch Black’s silken voice, spelling out the terms of his new position. “The kids believe in us, we get to keep existing, we team up if they need protecting from some big bad, and then we split up and go back to doing whatever makes them believe in each of us in the first place. Not exactly rocket science.”

Whatever North had been about to say, Jack’s declaration stops him cold. Tooth actually claps both hands to her mouth, like she’s just heard something awful, Sandy’s face falls like a stone, and Bunny just shakes his head.

“I see what ya mean,” he grunts, and Katherine stands a little straighter, a small but triumphant smile settling onto her face.

Tooth flutters forward, reaching out as though she wants to pull Jack into a hug but stopping at the last second. “Oh, _Jack_. We thought you understood a little better after you got to know us! And that after, well, everything, you just wanted some space, some time to adjust before -” She runs a hand over her crest nervously, glancing up at North for reassurance, and Jack has to bite down on his tongue to keep from shouting.

“Before _what_? What is so important, that all of you just haven’t bothered to tell me?”

The silence is sudden and thick as glacial ice.

A flurry of gold explodes over Sandy’s head, shapes forming and dissolving too fast for Jack to follow. A few of the images he _thinks_ he sees still make him blink in surprise, though.

“Slow down, Sandy, I can’t -”

North sounds entirely too pleased with himself. “This one, I know. He is saying we all are married.”

For the second time in not long enough, Jack finds himself drawing a complete blank.

He finally manages to force a laugh, which quickly trails off. “Okay, good one, you guys, you really had me going.” He looks around, bracing himself for even one of the others to burst out laughing and agree that it’s a particularly good joke.

He doesn’t see even the faintest hint of a smile.

“This _is_ a joke, right?” Jack asks, uncertainly. Tooth’s sheepish grin and Bunny’s short, exasperated sigh provide all the answer he needs, even before Sandy starts furiously shaking his head and flashing various negative symbols over his head in gold. “This…isn’t a joke. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ah! Yes.”  North taps one finger thoughtfully against his chin, then raises it as though he’s just been struck by a thought. “Was Bunny’s idea.”

“Wh- I said we oughtta _court_ him proper, not that we shouldn’t tell him _anything at all_!”

“Oh, _Jack_ ,” Tooth says again, and this time she does fly forward, taking both of Jack’s hands in hers. “You really had no idea?”

“I didn’t know there was an idea to _have!_ ” Jack protests, squirming slightly as he tries to back away. He’s still not used to a lot of contact, and his discomfort must show on his face, because Tooth drops his hands almost instantly and draws back to a respectful distance. Nightlight nods to Katherine, who makes a small surprised sound, but they both take a half-step back, giving Jack his space without pulling away completely. It’s a tiny little thing but the thoughtfulness of it almost leaves Jack breathless.

“You guys really mean it, don’t you?” Jack asks, though it’s not really a question. “You _want_ me to be part of…this.” Just saying it out loud makes the whole thing feel heavier – no, not quite _heavier_ , but more solid. More real.

“Of course!” Tooth says it quickly, easily, as though there’s no question. “I mean, we wouldn’t force you into anything you don’t want to do, but, if you’ll have us…”

“Are you kidding? If _I’ll_ have _you_?” The smile that overtakes Jack’s face doesn’t feel wide enough for the bright, champagne-bubble feeling that swells in his chest and threatens to lift him clear off his feet. “Why didn’t you ask sooner?”

He only gets to see his smile mirrored on the other Guardians’ faces for a moment before he’s tackled to the floor under the force of six huge hugs.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> _So I’ve been reading a lot of Jules Verne lately amongst other Victorian era adventure novelists and got the headcanon that Kozmotis wrote like one._
> 
> _He either kept a journal (with pictures) and/or wrote letters to Tsar Lunar and his daughter. Somehow his journal(s?) or a collection of letters made their way to Earth. One of the Guardians(or maybe Mother Nature or MiM) translate it into English and gives both copies to Jamie as a gift._
> 
> _It’s a huge hit with Jamie and his friends. Suddenly General Kozmotis Pitchiner is, at least, Jamie’s hero. He wants to grow up to be just like the war hero; traveling to distant lands (planets), meeting strange people (races), and fighting the forces of evil. Jamie drives his mom crazy enough about the whole thing she helps him get some of the pictures enlarged into posters._
> 
> _Meanwhile, Pitch drags himself out of his lair, weak but bent on revenge. Starting with the child that caused all his plans to fall apart. Except when he reaches Jamie Bennett’s room, he’s sidetracked by the familiar looking pictures decorating the boy’s wall…._

“Are you looking for something?”

Jamie looks up from the shelf of library books he’s been poring over, to see a young woman smiling down at him. He straightens up, suddenly self-conscious. If she’s a librarian, she must be new - she’s younger and far prettier than Mrs. Parkins, and she has a _very_ pleasant smile. “Uh, I’m just browsing.”

The woman nods, and tucks a lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “Anything you’re interested in in particular? Maybe I can give you some recommendations.”

Jamie glances back at the shelf, and nods. “Yeah, actually, I just finished _Treasure Island_ and I was wondering if the guy wrote anything else?”

“Robert Louis Stevenson?” She has a pleasant laugh, too, bright and friendly, the kind of laugh that you could never mistake for mean. “Yes, he’s written a good deal more than just _Treasure Island_. Have you read _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_?”

Jamie leaves the library a full hour later with a backpack which is significantly heavier from the weight of all the books inside. Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle keep him company for the next two weeks, tales of adventure and mystery and excitement wrapping him up and drawing him into the past and the future and the bottom of the sea. He reaches the end of the stack of books with mixed despair and excitement, and stops. There’s a book he doesn’t recognize sitting on top of _The Time Machine_ , a book that looks impossibly old. It’s bound in faded, scuffed black leather, with embossed golden letters halfway-peeled off the front, rendering the title illegible.

Jamie flips the cover open, wondering what the strange book is. He’s expecting a title page, publication information, maybe just a few blank pages, so it comes as a surprise when he opens the cover and sees a page of neat, careful printing, ink faded with age to a coffee-coloured brown. For a moment, the letters looks foreign and odd, incomprehensible symbols spelling out words that he couldn’t even begin to decipher. Then Jamie blinks, and the lettering resolves into plain English.

_War Diary of Kozmotis Pitchiner, Captain_

_Being a Chronicle of the Fearling Wars_

“The _what_ wars?” Jamie asks aloud to the empty room. He decides he’ll read just a little bit more, maybe just the next few lines, hoping they’ll make things a little clearer.

_This morning, shortly after moonrise, the announcement that all expected was made. Even as I now set down these words, we are once more at war with our oldest and most irascible foes…_

…

“Jamie! No books at the table.”

…

It’s very late when Jamie finishes the last sentence and flicks the flashlight off, emerging at last from the stuffy heat under the covers to gasp in a long draught of cool night air. He lies flat on his back, staring unseeing up at the ceiling while ships with golden sails and creatures with black holes for mouths flit across the vista of his imagination.

He hadn’t known that anyone could write like that. It feels like everything had actually _happened_ , like the author had really lived through years of war, the victories and defeats, had really sailed across the galaxies, had seen first-hand the insides of stars.

After a little while, he frowns, and flicks the flashlight back on, rereading the last paragraph. It doesn’t seem quite right. After all of the – _amazing_ \- things that Kozmotis had done, after all the ranks he’s attained and the people he’s saved, even if he _says_ it’s an honour, it doesn’t seem quite right to send him away to guard the prison all on his own. He didn’t say when – or _if_ – he’d be able to come back, either. What kind of reward was _that_ , to get stuck with a bunch of people you hate for the rest of your life? And what about his daughter? Sure, the _words_ sound happy, but, well…

He sighs in frustration and drops the book, still open, on the bedside table, before turning over, curling into a ball and tucking the covers up tight around his neck.

His dreams are confused and frantic, filled with a slow, creeping dread, and he wakes up with a start, gasping for air and looking wildly around. He doesn’t notice the tall, slender shadow stopped over his bedside table for a few moments, but when he does, Jamie grabs the flashlight and turns it on, staring at the startled face of Pitch Black with his heart hammering in his chest.

“Oh, it’s you,” he sighs, and the Boogeyman makes an affronted noise. “If you’re here to, like, get revenge or something, I’m still not scared of you, and the Guardians -”

“What is this?” Pitch interrupts him, pointing at something white on the bedside table. He says _this_ like the word is a firecracker trapped in his mouth, desperate for escape.

Jamie blinks, and looks closer. “A book?” It’s fallen open to the page that it always seems to want to open to, a sketch of a dark-haired girl leaning out over a railing, staring out into an abyss of hastily-scribbled stars. Kozmotis’ daughter, Jamie remembers, the last time he saw her before he had to set sail.

Pitch’s eyes narrow, and he flips through a few pages before turning a glare on Jamie, drawing himself up to his full height. “Where did you get it?”

Jamie yawns. He’s seen this routine before, and he’s too tired to deal with this. “The _library_. Can I go back to sleep now, or – hey! What are you doing?”

Pitch snaps the book shut, scooping it up and holding it close to his chest like a child, Jamie thinks, and then wonders why it’s that thought that strikes him. “What does it look like?”

“That’s not _yours_!”

Pitch takes a step back, as though he’s been struck. “No,” he finally agrees, smoothly, but the way his fingers clench around the book’s spine give him away. “It doesn’t belong to you either.”

Jamie lunges forward, but the covers get in his way, and he smacks facefirst down on the mattress as Pitch dissolves into the shadows of his bedroom.

…

Jamie goes to return his books at the end of his two weeks with a downcast look. It’s Mrs. Parkins, not the new librarian, who’s working the counter, and he groans inwardly at the thought of having to explain to the old woman what had happened to the other book.

“I’m really sorry,” he says, as he places the others on the counter and hopes she’ll go easy on him if he looks pathetic enough. “I lost the other one.”

Mrs. Parkins pushes her glasses up her nose and gives Jamie a totally unreadable stare. “You lost a library book?”

“Yes,” Jamie mumbles to his toes.

Mrs. Parkins clicks her tongue disapprovingly, and begins to scan the others back in. She stops after the last, and gives Jamie another look that could mean anything. “Young man, all of your books are here.”

“What?” Jamie’s head snaps back up, and he leans over the counter to get a peek at her computer screen. “No, that can’t be right, I had one more -”

“What was it called?” Mrs. Parkins asks, clearly losing patience, and Jamie blurts the title out without thinking. This time, the look he gets is downright puzzled, but Mrs. Parkins types the words into the search bar, hits enter, and after a moment, shakes her head.

“There’s no such book in our library system.”

“But that’s – that’s not possible!” Jamie bounces backwards off the counter, scanning the library for a head of auburn hair. “Ask the other librarian, the new one, she’s the one who helped me pick them out -”

Mrs. Parkins actually removes her glasses at those words. “I beg your pardon?”

“The new librarian?” Even as he says it, he can already tell what Mrs. Parkins’ answer will be.

And sure enough, she shakes her head. Jamie feels almost like he’s watching the world in slow motion when she says, “We haven’t hired anyone new since last year.”

“I see. I must have – maybe it was from school instead,” Jamie lies, knowing that it wasn’t. This is stranger than he ever suspected, and he knows, suddenly, that he’ll have to get to the bottom of it. “Thank you anyway.”

“All right. Have a good day, young man, and _don’t_ lose any library books!”

Jamie nods, and practically runs out the door. He’s got a thousand questions, but he thinks he knows where to start asking.

Tonight, he thinks, he’ll ask his mother to leave the nightlight unplugged.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt:
> 
> _So I’ve been watching a bit of Adventure Time, and I got to the episode “I remember you”, which gave me the following, heartbreaking image:_
> 
> _The Golden Army found out at some point how to use the Fearlings as a weapon. This is triggered with the help of a piece of jewelry, and in Kozmotis’ case, his locket._
> 
> _The trouble is, the more he uses it, the more he becomes the Nightmare King, and less the Golden General._

The first time feels like slipping into a dream. Time runs strangely and the things you know shift, somehow, without your noticing; just as you can dream and know without being told that you are a ghost or a king or only a small child again, regardless of what you are in the waking world, just as you can know the secrets of flight when your waking self could never unlock them. When the golden chain falls from around your neck and you wake, there are things that slither down under the surface of your memory, leaving gaps behind, and for a moment you feel certain you could reach for shadows and make them bend to your will, if only you could remember how.

It’s just like dreaming.

And because it’s just like dreaming, it’s easy to think it must be harmless. The soldier who loses his mind, the one who doesn’t come back from the dark; these things must be unusual, flukes, caused by faults in those who succumbed. It couldn’t happen to _you_. You’re in command. You’re not like them.

(The gaps are growing wider every time you come back to yourself, taunting you, nagging at you like the lingering remnants of a dream you can’t recall but can’t shake off.)

You take to carrying the little silver locket with you wherever you go, just in case. Your wife doesn’t like it, wishes you would put it away when you’re with her, but it’s for her own protection. The world is vast and full of terrors. You should know.

(You have nightmares of being one of them.)

(You do not know – _cannot_ know – whether they are only nightmares.)

Her face appears in some of them, half-dreams, half-memories, and that becomes the only way you can tell if they are real. Her face, her voice, soft words talking you down, growing sterner, more commanding as the fragments collect with time. Turning to tears.

You can’t understand why she’s so upset.

One of your officers files a report, calls you ‘erratic’ and ‘dangerous’, gets you hauled up in front of a tribunal. They rule you fine to return to combat and your wife won’t stop crying no matter what you say, no matter how you try to reassure her. You won’t be hurt. They can’t hurt you, not anymore.

She only shakes her head, and won’t explain what she means when she says that isn’t what she’s afraid of.

(You feel certain that you’re losing time, all the time, little chunks of your life dissolving into nothingness when you weren’t looking, and the nightmares keep coming, dark and inescapable and relentless.)

Your daughter is crying. You don’t know why. You aren’t certain how she came to be here, or how you yourself did, or where ‘here’ even is. You scoop her up in your arms regardless, hold her close and bury your face in her hair, whispering reassurances even as your mind recoils from the sucking black hole that is your memory of how this came to be. How can you reassure her when you can’t even be sure of yourself?

You think you understand now.

…

You wake from dreaming to find them gone. A note in your wife’s elegant handwriting says that they’ve gone back home, that they will not be returning to the front and to you.

You tear it to pieces and then wish you hadn’t, wish you had kept it, a little piece of your little family, something to keep the nightmares at bay.

But it’s not as though you haven’t got anything left of them.

After all, their portraits are still inside the little silver locket that you carry with you everywhere.

All you have to do

is

wear

it

always


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: _Loki is Kozmotis’s father and bookcanon happens._ OP wanted Marvel’s Thor; I went with the Poetic Edda instead.

_Fetters will break_

_and the wolf run free;_

_she knows much old lore,_

_but I see further into the future_

_to the doom of the gods,_

_the bitter doom of the victorious gods._

…

(you long for what you believe you never had, not knowing; not knowing the weight of a tiny person in your arms, not knowing small hands twining flowers through your hair; not knowing your own small hands reaching up for larger, slender, colder ones, not knowing the familiar quirk of a smile or the cadence of a mischievous laugh, not knowing the careful teaching of the turn of a blade or of an illusion, not knowing the comfort of an embrace, not knowing, not knowing, not knowing)

They say you will destroy the world; you will bring down the greatest and wisest of leaders; your children will devour the sun.

You leave to prove them wrong. It is nothing but words, a story, a scrap of prophecy that should be long forgotten.

You should have remembered the truth about prophecy.

You should have remembered the truth about stories.

(your daughter devours the sun, just as was foretold; each night, its light is driven from the sky by her hungry jaws)

They call you wolf; they praise your fierceness, your viciousness, your sharp sharp teeth. They learn how sharp those teeth can be when they break faith with you, when they bind you out of fear, when at last you bite at the hand that feeds you. You grew too strong, too quickly, for their comfort, and though they have heard no whispers of the threats, the promises, that dog your heels, the story has followed you all the same.

They leave you, bound to your duty, the most unbreakable bond of all, to await the end of the world.

You will never know if they knew that, by binding you, they only hastened it.

(the ice in him, the mischief in him, draws you, plucks at the strings taut within your heart, for reasons you can’t explain, can’t recall; you are as surprised as he is when the plea for a family spills from your lips)

 

The truth about stories is this:

Stories tell the truth.

The truth about prophecies is this:

Prophecies have a way of fulfilling themselves.

…

_And so she will now_

_sink down._


	21. Chapter 21

“North, mate, yer elbow’s in my ear.”

“Jack! That was my wing!”

“Sorry! If _somebody_ would move their big rabbit behind -”

Sandy, squeezed at the very centre of the group hug gone horribly wrong, rolled his eyes and silently blew out a huff of disappointment. Really, it was sweet of his friends and fellow Guardians to try to cheer him up like this, but if they didn’t get themselves sorted out soon, he was going to have to take matters into his own hands.

“Ouch, Bunny, that’s not better -”

“Well, maybe if I didn’t have an _elbow_ in my _e_ _ar_!”

If he had to put up with much more of this, Sandy decided, his eyes were going to roll right back into his head. He sighed without a sound, and wriggled around, causing a chorus of complaints, until his hands were free. Long ropes of dreamsand formed at a gesture, unnoticed by the bickering Guardians as Sandy wove the glittering strands around them.

“Just because you’re cute and fluffy -”

“ _Hey_! You get over here and say that to my _face_!”

“I _am_ saying it to your face. We’re nose-to-nose, in case you hadn’t noticed!”

There was a soft shifting sound as the dreamsand ropes tightened, before blissful silence descended.

Sandy brushed a few stray sparkles from his hands, surveying his handiwork with pride. The Guardians slumbered peacefully where they’d fallen, Tooth with a wing draped over Jack, who sprawled across Bunny’s chest, face pressed into his ruff, all three of them curled up to North as though he were the world’s largest and cuddliest teddy bear.

Nodding proudly to himself, Sandy wiggled his way in between Jack and Tooth, curling up like a contented cat. His eyelids began to droop, and he blinked blearily as sleep, never far away, crept slowly up on him.

So perhaps it was only a half-waking dream that the shadows around the room began to shift and shiver, that a slender figure insinuated its way in beside him. Dream or not, though, Sandy smiled into Pitch’s chest, before throwing an arm over the Boogeyman (or, at least, as far over as he could) and promptly falling asleep.


	22. Chapter 22

So, yeah, sometimes Jack hangs out with the giant goose.

He didn’t really mean to start. He likes flying, she likes flying; he likes the cold, she likes high altitudes where it snows all year round. And most importantly, they both tend to gravitate to Katherine. (He didn’t really mean to start doing that either. It just sort of happened, after the first time she hunted him down and sat down next to him in the rafters and refused to leave until he’d told her everything he could remember about his sister, and had then produced a sketch that looked so much like the face in his fractured recollections that he’d nearly cried. That sketch is still folded up, kept close to his heart. Since then, he’s hardly worried about being dislodged by her presence from the strange but wonderful whatever that he’s found with the Guardians at all.)

He doesn’t really notice at first when the goose starts nibbling at the back of his head, since she does that to the end of Katherine’s braid all the time. It’s only when he realises that the others get similar treatment as well that he really starts to put two and two together.

The next time Kailash settles on a rooftop next to where Jack is perched and starts to tug at strands of his hair, he turns around and runs his fingers through her feathers, separating and smoothing them out with a patience he hadn’t known he possessed. Her surprised and delighted honk makes him laugh, and he gives one of her feathers an extra tug, just because.

 


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mature, again.
> 
> The one and only time I have ever written blackice.

The hands on Pitch’s shoulders are icy, the chill of a glacier seeping from each of the fingers that rest, heavy as fate, against his bared skin.

Somewhere, water drips, slow, irregular crystalline drops echoing through the halls of blinding ice. Pitch tries to focus on the sound, but he can’t tune out the soft, low voice that fills his ears and sets his head spinning.

“Why did you come here?”

One hand trails up the back of Pitch’s neck, leaving a fine filigree of ice in its wake, the chill almost feverish against the heat of Pitch’s skin. Fingers curl into his hair, drawing his head gently but irresistibly backwards to meet ice-blue eyes gazing down.

A shiver tears through Pitch, and it isn’t due to the cold numbing his knees to the rough texture of the ice beneath him, only partly due to the frozen bands holding his hands behind his back, the slow slide of melting frost trickling in chilly rivulets from the back of his neck down his spine. There’s something in the depths of those blue eyes, something wild and unpredictable as the boy who owns them.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Jack says, with uncharacteristic gentleness, giving Pitch’s hair another soft tug. His grip is firm, commanding and completely assured, and despite himself, Pitch finds himself leaning back into it. “I already know. You’ve been telling yourself it’s about revenge, haven’t you? That I’m the weak point to strike at if you want to take down the Guardians?”

Jack leans down until his lips brush Pitch’s ear with every snowfall-quiet word. “Did you always know you were lying?”

Pitch only just manages to bite off the choked sound that escapes him. He isn’t quite fast enough, though, and Jack’s laugh is the low grind of glaciers calving, reverberating through Pitch’s skull until it fills the entire world.

“This is what you really wanted, isn’t it?” Jack whispers, drawing away from Pitch, untangling his fingers from Pitch’s hair. For a moment, the loss of contact, of direction, leaves Pitch feeling raw and unbalanced. Then Jack wraps both arms around him, pulling Pitch close against him. Pale fingers splay greedily across Pitch’s chest, leaving lines of silver frost forming lazy spirals against stormcloud skin. Jack counts Pitch’s ribs with his fingers, traces down his sternum all the way to the lines of his hips, maps each inch of exposed skin until Pitch is gasping for air, desperate for the teasing to end, and covered with a fine layer of sparkling frost. Despite his best efforts, he can’t stifle all the sounds that Jack’s clever, curious fingers pull from him.

Jack presses his face to the curve of Pitch’s shoulder, taking a deep breath in. Pitch feels, rather than sees, the grin that splits Jack’s face, and a thrill ripples through him at the soft scrape of Jack’s teeth against his skin.

“This _is_ what you wanted,” Jack sighs, and his long exhale drifts across Pitch’s shoulder like ghostly hands. Pitch tries to shake his head, to deny the plainly obvious, but his cock bobbing between his legs gives him away as surely as the way he leans back into Jack’s grip. Jack laughs again, and cups Pitch’s jaw in one hand, holding Pitch still with deceptive ease. “It’s all right. You don’t have to lie to me. You never wanted me to give in to you.” Cool lips press against the nape of Pitch’s neck, and his shiver has little to do with the temperature of that kiss. Jack’s fingers skim Pitch’s spine, pick out each vertebra; cold hands caress the curve of his ass and massage his thighs, completely ignoring his needy cock in their ministrations. All of Pitch’s carefully-constructed arguments shatter and scatter, any thought of how he might have intended to _use_ Jack disappearing under the onslaught.

“It’s all right,” Jack repeats, his words soft as the faintest breath of wind, but clear enough that, even in the high, empty hall, not even the quietest syllable is lost. The moan that tears from Pitch’s throat as icy fingers finally, _finally_ curl around his cock is loud enough to shock even him. “You don’t have to fight it anymore. I passed your test. And now…” Jack strokes Pitch’s cock, once, long and slow and painfully perfect, and Pitch turns his head to try to hide a sob of desperate delight.

Jack makes a low, disappointed sound, pulling back just enough to sling a leg over Pitch’s and shift so that he’s sitting in Pitch’s lap. He takes Pitch’s face in both hands, holds Pitch so that he’s forced to meet Jack’s eyes.

“None of that,” Jack says, and the steel in his voice is only intensified by the strange dangerous wildness in his gaze. “You’re _mine_. And I want _everything_.”

Pitch’s breath catches, and he licks his lips before nodding his enthusiastic assent. Jack’s grin is bright and sudden and bordering on feral.

“I knew you’d understand,” he laughs, and for the first time, his voice betrays his desire, just as surely as the press of his cock against Pitch’s leg does. “You were right,” he adds, with a chuckle that sends a thrill skittering along Pitch’s spine and makes his cock ache. “We’re more alike than even you know.”

Pitch leans his head back, shutting his eyes as though that will help block out the overwhelming reality of Jack’s hands, Jack’s voice. His eyes fly open again with a strangled cry when Jack grinds up against him, Jack’s cock the only part of him that’s truly warm. The chill of Jack’s fingers as he takes them both in hand, such a sharp and sudden contrast to the fever heat that fills Pitch, is almost enough to undo Pitch then and there. He bucks up into Jack’s hand, and Jack gives a breathless laugh and and a long, teasing stroke that melts Pitch’s spine like the frost that decorates his chest. Pitch collapses against Jack’s shoulder, biting his tongue in a desperate attempt to keep from begging for more.

He doesn’t need to say a word, though. Jack’s strokes grow hungrier, less controlled, as his composure begins to break down. But it’s the words that spill from Jack’s lips, a stream of possessive praises, that finally send Pitch over the edge. Jack keeps talking even as Pitch stiffens and screams as his every nerve lights up like lightning, even as he spills over Jack’s hand and both their chests.

“You’re mine, you’re _mine_ , I’m a part of you now, you’ll never be able to get me out from under your skin -”

He only goes quiet when he comes, turning still and silent, and for a long moment, there’s no sound but their breath intermingled in the hush of the icy hall.

Jack breaks the silence first. “So, how good am I at being you?” he asks, as he breaks the bonds holding Pitch’s hands with a touch. Pitch still feels too boneless and breathless to move, and gladly relaxes into the exhausted hug that Jack pulls him into, letting Jack pet his hair without so much as a cursory struggle.

“Not bad,” Pitch says, at last, when he finally finds his tongue again. His own smile feels unfamiliar when he adds, “But maybe you could use a little more practice.”


	24. Chapter 24

Sandy was just settling in for a long night, spreading his cloud around the tip of the tower peak of the workshop, when a flicker of movement caught his eye. He turned, to see Katherine waving to him from one of the windows. When he drew up beside her, she gave him a huge, bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Sandman,” she said, and Sandy was alarmed to hear something like a sob in her voice. “May I join you?”

Sandy nodded immediately, patting the cloud beside him in invitation. Katherine’s smile grew a little less pained, and she scrambled out the window without a moment’s hesitation. She settled in comfortably beside Sandy, plumping up the dreamsand until she had something of a cushion to lean back against. Sandy made certain that she was secure in her seat before raising both hands, letting his cloud fly up, up, until they could see all of the new Santoff Claussen laid out below like a bright bauble. Automatically, Sandy looked for any spots of black blight, relaxing only when he was sure the shadows were safe. He looked over to Katherine, only to see her staring down at the spot where the nightmare coffin that had held her trapped had fallen.

“Did you know him?”

Sandy indicated, through a series of sand symbols, that there were many things that that question could mean. Katherine sniffed, and gave a faint, small smile fit to break Sandy’s heart. “I’m sorry. It’s just - You were there for the Golden Age, weren’t you?”

Sandy nodded, warily. Katherine looked one wrong word away from tears.

“Did you -” Her voice caught, and she gave a choked laugh, glancing up towards the stars, just beginning to sprinkle themselves across the deepening violet dome so far overhead. “Did you know Nightlight, then?”

Sandy considers. No, he answers, and Katherine’s desperate grin crumples like a page torn, unwanted, from a storybook that tells too sad a tale. It had been vast, the Golden Age, he tells her, hoping to see understanding in her grey eyes. It had stretched between the stars, throughout the Milky Way, beyond anything her people had ever dreamed of -

“And all of it’s gone,” Katherine interrupted, crossing her arms so that she hugged her own shoulders. “I know the story. The Constellations destroyed, the poor Tsar stranded, you and Bunny both trapped here, Nightlight -” Her voice broke, again, and she swallowed hard, rubbing just under one eye with a clenched fist. The look she gave Sandy was curiously intense, expectant, when at last she said, “And only Pitch to blame.”

Sandy could only shrug. He hadn’t ever been a subject of any of the Constellations’ empires, had never really been a true _part_ of the glorious Golden Age, and a millennium or so of sleep and silence had given him ample time to think. And the humans had a saying, didn’t they? Something about hindsight.

He wasn’t expecting Katherine to give a soft sigh and the first genuine smile Sandy had seen her wear since climbing aboard his cloud. “I hoped you’d say that,” she said, half to herself. “But I don’t know what either of us can do about it. They’d have killed Pitch in an instant for what he did, if they didn’t think it would make them too much like him. But they’re so proud of what they _have_ done. Did you hear Bunnymund when he put the final seal on the lair?” She stared off at some star on the horizon, or perhaps only at her own thoughts. When she spoke, it was in an odd, affected voice, as though quoting from memory. “ ‘A fitting punishment’. Ha!”

Sandy nodded, even though Katherine wasn’t looking in his direction. A fate worse than death, he agreed, as at last Katherine turned to face him.

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Her anger slipped away as quickly as it had risen. “They think it’s over now, but they have no idea how wrong they are. Everything’s repeating. Our Golden Age on Earth is ending before it’s even begun.” She sighed, and hugged her knees tight to her chest.

Her words were clear, but it was still a long moment before her meaning fully sank in. The slow, cold bloom of horror in his chest was something that Sandy hadn’t felt in a long time; perhaps too long, if this was what it took to inspire it.

Sandy leaned forward, putting his small, golden hands over each of Katherine’s. She looked up, startled, and Sandy met her eyes, giving her a smile that he knew must be lackluster. Katherine’s answering grin wasn’t much better.

“I thought that once Pitch was gone, I wouldn’t be afraid anymore,” she said softly, so low that Sandy had to strain to hear her. “Now I wonder if I’ll ever not be afraid again.”

Sandy didn’t answer, didn’t move, except to give her right hand the slightest of reassuring squeezes. His mind’s eye was filled with flaming, falling lights, tumbling uncontrollably towards oblivion.

No, he agreed, at last. Maybe we won’t.

“I miss Nightlight,” Katherine said, and her voice was, if possible, even smaller and sadder than before. “Every time I try to close my eyes, I just see -”

Let me make you a dream, Sandy offered, before she could finish the sentence.

“Would you?” Katherine asked, and Sandy nodded, conjuring up a swirl of sand that quickly formed itself into the shape of a girl flying astride a goose, mouth wide in a silent, carefree laugh. It did not escape Sandy’s notice that Katherine’s eyes followed its movements with something like hunger.

Sleep now. You’re safe here.

Katherine bit her lip, and for a moment, Sandy thought she might refuse. At last, though, she reached out to the sparkling dream, not quite touching it, only cupping her hands around it.

“I wanted to ask you what you thought he would have wanted,” she said, without taking her eyes from the golden goose’s wings. “For us to take revenge? For us not to? But I don’t have to ask anymore. I think I know.” At last, she looked up at Sandy, and he was startled to see that, after everything, it was only now that tears had begun to spill down her cheeks. “I think he’d just want us to be happy.”

Sandy didn’t have any answer to that, but Katherine didn’t seem to expect one. Instead, she reached out and gently took hold of the dream he’d woven. It burst into dust again at a touch, swirling up and around her head, and she was asleep with a small smile on her face before Sandy could think of a single thing to tell her. He had to smile himself, as he carefully tucked the cloud around Katherine like a blanket, not wanting to disturb her peaceful rest.

Still, though, as he flew through the night, spreading much-needed hopeful dreams throughout the sad city of Santoff Claussen and the world beyond, Sandy felt the weight of her fears on his own bright heart.

He, too, knew the story. And he knew how it ended.

And for only the second time in his long, long life, the Sandman wondered if he, himself, would ever have another sweet, peaceful dream again.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [ksclaw's](ksclaw.tumblr.com) Wee Free Boogeymen AU, a Discworld AU based on The Wee Free Men.

There was a rustle of cloth, and the dark, musty-smelling sack was yanked open, letting in a stream of light that hurt Jack’s eyes after so long in the dark. With it came the sight of curious (in all possible senses of the word) faces peering in at him, a burst of distant noise and bustle, and wafting scents of cedar and peppermint.

“What -” Jack started to ask, pushing his way out of the sack, but stopped short, his mouth forming a silent ‘o’ as he took in his surroundings. The place he’d apparently been kidnapped to was massive and richly decorated, but not in such a way as to be intimidatingly opulent. Jack had seen plenty of palaces, and this wasn’t one. In fact, what it put him in mind of most was a vast old library, walls lined with books and dark wood, full of history and warm, dark, secret corners. Only two things kept him from thinking that it _was_ a library - one, the pervasive sounds of activity, and two, the people gathered in the room who were, even now, staring at him.

All right, so maybe 'people’ was a bit of a broad term for the bird, the kangaroo, and the huge, furry yetis. But still, it was enough for Jack to know instantly where he was. This was the workshop at the North Pole, the place he’d been wanting to see inside for decades.

And he was face-to-face with the Guardians of Childhood.

Jack didn’t have much time to process what had happened, what was going on, before the huge, bearded man whom Jack recognised from a few stolen glimpses as Santa Claus clapped his hands together and boomed, “Jack Frost! You made it all right?”

“Oh _yeah_ ,” Jack said, sarcasm layering his voice as he brushed a few specks of dust from his sleeve and snatched his staff back from the yeti who held it out. “I love being stuffed in a sack and shoved through a magic portal.”

The man Jack only knew as Santa seemed unperturbed. “Oh, good. That was my idea.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, enough with the niceties,” the rabbit growled, stomping up to put himself nose-to-nose with Jack. “Frost. For some reason, Man in the Moon thinks we need your help.”

“ _My_ help?” Jack pressed a hand to his chest, looking around at the assembled Guardians, but none of them showed any sign of cracking a smile. “Okay, Sandy, is this your idea of a dumb joke and I’m gonna wake up in a minute, or -”

“It’s not a joke,” the Tooth Fairy interrupted, breaking away from her constant stream of chatter to the cloud of little fairies that ringed her head. “The children of Earth are in danger -”

“From _what_?” Jack broke in, and okay, maybe it sounded a little accusing, but maybe that was the point. “What could possibly be putting kids in danger that the great and powerful Guardians of Childhood could need _my_ help to defeat?”

The fairy had the decency to look embarrassed. Santa, on the other hand, only nodded as if the question had been totally sincere.

“The Boogeymen are back,” he said, with such absolute seriousness that Jack couldn’t help a snort of laughter.

“The _Boogeymen_? Seriously? That’s your big, scary monster?” He tried - not very hard - to stifle a chuckle. “Oh yeah, you guys _definitely_ need backup for this one.”

The rabbit’s scowl would have scared any small child way more than anything he might have to defend them against, Jack was pretty sure. “And just what do you mean by that?”

“What - come on, we _are_ talking about the Wee Free Boogeymen here, right?” Jack held up his thumb and forefinger, about an inch apart. “About so big, constantly drunk or angry or both, like to run around stealing stuff and popping out at people to make them scream? _Those_ Boogeymen?”

“Yeah,” the rabbit rumbled, sounding - if it were possible - even less impressed with Jack than before. “The little blighters haven’t been spotted in nearly three hundred years, and suddenly they’re everywhere.”

“Okay.” Jack shrugged. “So what?”

“ _What_?”

The Guardians had said that almost in unison. Even Sandy had shot off a shower of golden exclamation points like a firework. Jack looked from one to the other, totally nonplussed.

“Why…is this…a big deal? I mean, it’s just the Boogeymen. It’s not like it’s a _real_ problem.”

“Jack -” the Tooth Fairy started, warily, but the rabbit reached out to stop her, giving Jack a very unpleasant grin as he did.

“Nah, wait, Tooth, I think I wanna hear this.” If Jack had been paying closer attention, his smile would have stopped Jack short. “Why’s that, Frost?”

“Well, it’s not like they’d be _dangerous_ ,” Jack continued, thoughtlessly. “If they existed, which they probably don’t.”

The gasp that the Tooth Fairy let out was Jack’s first sign that something wasn’t right.

The second sign came when a loud but still somehow, indefinably, _small_ voice shouted, “Probably _ye_ donae exist, ya daft bugger!”

The third sign was a skinny tower of something that looked almost like a shadow given substance, rising quickly into Jack’s field of vision, carrying a small, gray, and unmistakably pissed off man atop it.

The last thing that Jack heard, before something small and solid hit him right between the eyes with all the force of a very local explosion, was “Crivens!”


	26. Chapter 26

_This is all that’s left_.

Jack tries repeating the sentence in his head, then out loud, but it’s no use. He can’t - can’t _believe_ it. Can’t make the magnitude of the idea align with the faces still so fresh in his memory, the voices he can still practically hear, figures so bright and animated and _alive_ so near in his memory that he can’t bring himself to believe this is all that’s left of them. A small velvet pouch holding a handful of pearly white teeth, none bigger than a pea, gruesome in their innocence. The withered, blackened stalk of what had once been an aster. A tiny wooden figure, rounded and polished smooth, except where a deep gouge cuts through its wide, blue eyes. A handful of grey sand, dull and lifeless and light as dust.

 _All that’s left_.

“Did you get what you wanted?”

Jack doesn’t even bother to look up. “Go away.”

As ever, Pitch ignores him. Heavy footsteps kick up glittering puffs of snow as Pitch steps toward where Jack crouches on the ice, the weight of his gaze heavy on Jack’s shoulders. “You didn’t answer my question, Jack. _Did you get what you wanted_?”

Jack spins as he leaps up, ready to shout, to fight, to tear into Pitch for daring to interrupt his grieving like this. The words die on his tongue, though, his death-grip on his staff faltering, at the sight of the look on Pitch’s face, staring down at the handful of relics.

“What are you _wearing_?” Jack asks, instead, once the knot in his throat loosens enough to allow words to pass.

Pitch’s brow furrows, and he regards Jack as though Jack has just asked why he has two arms. “Why - oh, of course, _you_ weren’t there to see me during my last reign of terror.” His eyes, Jack notices, almost seem to have sunken; as though they’re staring out at the icy landscape from some unfathomable depth. The way they glitter is strangely mournful. Which makes no sense, Jack thinks. If his enemies have fallen, if he’s restored to his former glory, then why would _Pitch_ be mourning?

“I could ask you whether _you_ got what you wanted,” Jack snaps. “Shouldn’t you be celebrating? You finally did it! You _killed_ them all! Aren’t you at least _happy_ about it?”

Pitch actually flinches, taking a step backwards as though Jack’s physically struck him. For a single instant, he looks - _shattered_ , somehow, before his eyes narrow and his lips curl back into a snarl. His voice is low and thick with menace when he finally speaks, his words loud in the sucking silence.

“ _I_ killed them?”

Jack grasps his staff tight in both hands, raising it defensively. “You tricked me,” he says, but the words he’d intended to come out bold and accusing sound uncertain, even frightened, instead. Around him, the wind begins to rise.

Pitch clucks his tongue disapprovingly, shaking his head in mock sadness. “I tricked you. Really, Jack, I thought you’d have a better justification than that. The - your _friends_ deserve that much, at least.”

“You _tricked_ me!” Jack howls, and this time lets loose a burst of stinging ice. Pitch only raises a hand, and a cloud of billowing dark engulfs Jack’s frosty lightning without so much as a sound or a flicker. Jack hurls blast after blast into the cloud with no result, until he’s spent, panting and leaning against his staff for support.

Then, and only then, does Pitch step through the dark like smoke, letting it dissipate even as he advances on Jack.

“That really _is_ the best you’ve got,” he muses aloud, as he circles Jack, like some bird of prey waiting to pounce. “That’s all you have left. A handful of junk and the shaky faith that you’re _good_.” His laugh is dark and bitter and rumbles through the winter-white air like thunder. “Tell me, how does it feel to know that their blood is on your hands? That if you’d only had a little more control, a little more _\- compassion -_ if you had been anyone but _you_ , they’d still be standing here?”

“Shut _up_!” Jack screams into the rising wind, feeling the words tearing at his throat like jagged ice. “This is _your_ fault! _You_ did this! You _planned_ this!”

“And it would never have worked if it weren’t for your _selfishness_!” Pitch shouts back, his affected indifference finally cracking. “If you hadn’t been so certain you could do no wrong, that what you wanted was what you _deserved -_ ” He bites the sentence off, sharply, glaring at Jack as though he could light Jack aflame with the sheer heat of his rage. And maybe he could. Jack’s never seen Pitch like this before, this powerful, or this angry. Or -

The words spill out of Jack’s mouth before he can stop them. “What’s wrong with your face?”

“What? Nothing is _wrong with my face_ , you brat, what -”

“Really?” Jack bites down on the inside of his cheek. “Because it looks like you’re crying.”

Pitch freezes as though he’s just been encased completely in Jack’s clearest ice. One black-gloved hand reaches up, ever so slowly, to brush his glistening cheek. He stares at the faint glimmer of wetness on his finger with an expression that Jack can’t read at all. “I don’t - I can’t - Don’t be absurd, Frost. And don’t change the subject!” He balls both hands into fists, but doesn’t stop staring at them as though he’s never seen them before. “I only came here to thank you. For doing for me what I could never do on my own.” The words themselves are like daggers, but they lack the force behind them that would make them really cut.

“This is all your fault,” Jack repeats, but he can’t find the venom to make his words sting either. Pitch is still staring down at his hands with a mixture of suspicion, disgust, and something deep and old and infinitely sad that Jack can’t name, even as tears spill, silent and unregarded, down his cheeks.

“Keep telling yourself that,” Pitch says, shortly, finally looking up and away across the ice. “Goodbye, Jack Frost. I doubt our paths will cross again.”

He’s gone before Jack can so much as blink, not leaving so much as footprints in the snow.

It takes Jack a long moment to realise that, in their whole exchange, Pitch had not once met his eyes.


	27. Chapter 27

The knock on the door comes just as the other four are beginning to wonder in earnest where Jack is, just as wonder starts to turn to worry. The knock, when it comes, comes with the force and suddenness of a late-spring blizzard, battering the Pole’s solid, heavy oaken doors as though they’re under siege. The blows to the door are accompanied by a shout that is sharp-edged with panic.

“Hey! Is anybody there? We need help!”

The doors are flung wide to reveal Jack, remarkably unscathed for the look of terror he wears, half-carrying and half-dragging something long and bulky. It’s only once a yeti tries to take it from him and drops it with a surprised yodel that it becomes clear that the package is, in fact, a person. And not just any person, but a battered and strangely altered Pitch Black. He lets out a low grunt when he hits the floor, but doesn’t move, lying as still as someone for whom movement is no longer an option.

Bunny is the first to react. Jack obviously expects this, stepping forward to intercept him, but all Bunny does is gesture towards the sorry figure on the floor. “Jacko, what -”

“Can’t you see? Something’s really wrong with him!”

Something is, clearly, really wrong with Pitch. It’s more than just the obvious bruises, the purpling mass mottling and misshaping half his face; more than just the bones that protrude against his skin, visible through the tears in the tattered, greyed coat that drapes over him like a shroud. It’s the pallor of his unbruised skin, an ashen, sickly hue somehow unlike his usual smoky grey. It’s the raggedness of the antique clothing that hangs off of him, remnants of something that might once have been a uniform. And, Sandy notices, it’s something indescribable missing from the shadows Pitch casts and the shadows cast upon him. Somehow, they’re lighter, deader, lacking some vitality, some indefinable menace.

It is this last that knocks Sandy backwards in the air, both small hands pressed to a heart that seems to have suddenly recalled the frantic energy of its youthful flights between galaxies. None of the others notice his distress, however, because this is precisely when Pitch opens his eyes. One iris is a winking gold coin, an offering to bygone gods; the other only the faintest golden glint, a slit in a ground-meat face. Something dark flashes across his eyes at the sight of the assembled Guardians, gone too fast for Sandy to name it even if he’d wanted to, replaced by a confusion so sincere that it almost convinces Sandy that nothing dark had been there at all.

“Who -” Pitch starts, trying to push himself up, before cutting himself off with a sharp sound of pain. He lies back, his eyes slipping closed once again, and is still.

Sandy’s heart refuses to be quieted as easily.

…

They put Pitch in one of the many rooms at the Pole, in a space carved out from the warren-like tunnels full of stored toys and tools. North disappears into his workshop for a few hours and reappears with a huge grin and a full set of hand-carved bedroom furniture, proclaiming with pride that he’s ‘still got it’. Sandy volunteers a mattress and bedding. No one questions where he found it.

Pitch sleeps for three days straight, a sleep so deep and complete that Sandy starts to worry and sends a dream to make certain he hasn’t started to fade. The results are troubling; the dream quickly finds a foothold and begins to grow, proving that the sleeper still has a mind capable of dreaming, but not even the faintest shadow of a nightmare appears to mar it. And the shadows stay lifeless, haunted by nothing more than the occasional spiderweb.

Sandy isn’t there when Pitch wakes up, sits straight up, and screams his daughter’s name, but he can’t say, when he’s told, that he’s surprised.

“What does it mean?” Jack asks, and Sandy shrugs. He’s not the only one who’d like to know.

The next time that Pitch wakes up, he demands to speak to Bunny’s commanding officer, tries to pull rank on the yeti acting as his nursemaid, and begs to be told what’s become of his daughter.

“I think he’s sincere,” Bunny grudgingly admits, when the Guardians gather for an emergency meeting.

“I _told_ you,” Jack insists. “He stopped a bunch of nightmares from attacking  _Jamie_ of all people - and got the snot kicked out of him doing it. Something’s _really_ wrong with him.” He stops, glances guiltily at Sandy. “You don’t think - I mean, I’ve only heard stories, but -”

“Da, this is what we all are thinking,” North interrupts. “Question is, can we trust him?”

“Not as far as we can throw him,” Tooth says firmly, her voice clipped and cold.

Sandy signs, and Jack bursts into laughter. “True, Sandy, that _is_ pretty far.”

In the end, they decide that Sandy should be there the next time Pitch wakes, to determine for himself whether they can believe the sudden change in Pitch is real. This turns out to mean several long nights spent spinning dreams from inside the Pole and waiting, until, at last, Pitch opens those flashing golden eyes and fixes them on Sandy.

Sandy puts aside the dreamsand scarf he’s been knitting, letting it dissolve into a puff of golden glitter, and returns the stare. He thinks he sees a flicker of recognition there, but he can’t be sure.

“You’re…Sanderson, aren’t you?” Pitch says, at length. His voice is little more than a hoarse rasp, velvet turned sandpaper, but the bruise covering the right side of his face is turning yellow and the swelling has gone down enough that his eye is fully open. “The star pilot. I’ve heard of you. Seen you a few times, on patrol.”

Sandy nods once, sedately, perhaps a little more so than usual, trying to counter the relentless thunder of his heart.

There’s nothing but perfect sincerity, heartbreaking frustration and confusion in Pitch’s voice when he says, “Will _you_ tell me what’s going on? No one else will tell me anything, and I don’t - I don’t know -”

Sandy reaches out, almost without meaning to, and takes hold of one of Pitch’s long, pale hands in both of his own small ones. Pitch stops, halfway through a word, and stares at his hand in Sandy’s. He seems caught off his guard, so entranced by the sight that Sandy has to tap him on the arm to get him to look back up and see the words that Sandy’s signing.

_I just want to know one thing._

“Anything,” Pitch answers instantly, translating the symbols Sandy uses with absolute ease, paying no heed to the fact that they’ve been out of common usage for centuries upon centuries.

_Why are you pretending to be Kozmotis?_

The man before Sandy freezes, going stiff and silent as cut granite, before exhaling slowly, closing his eyes. When he opens them again, their golden glint is cold.

Sandy doesn’t try to stop him when he snatches back his hand, cradling it against his body as though he’s been burned.

“Very clever,” Pitch says, reaching for venomous but not quite finding it. His voice still sounds harsh and raw, and Sandy realises that must not have been part of the act - he really _is_ hurt. “What gave the game away? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” The glare he turns on Sandy is similarly declawed, and he misses the signs that Sandy tries to interrupt with, perhaps without intent, perhaps on purpose. Either way, he doesn’t see Sandy’s explanation, doesn’t see the symbols spelling out Sandy’s understanding that it was never a matter of Pitch’s simply losing his memories. “Well? Run and tell your friends, before they fall into my trap, or I have a chance to get away.”

 _You would try?_ Sandy asks, momentarily distracted. Pitch’s smile is bitter and hard and twists the bruised part of his face in a way that makes Sandy wince.

“To run away? Wouldn’t you? After all, you’ve got me here powerless, you might as well try to finish things once and for all.”

 _Is that why you’re doing this?_ Sandy signs quickly. _Because you’re powerless_?

“You say it like it’s such a little thing,” Pitch says absently, gazing resolutely at a spot a little to Sandy’s left, not meeting Sandy’s eyes. “Why do you think I did it?”

Sandy says nothing.

“Oh, forget it,” Pitch says, at last, falling back against the pillows. “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like.”

Sandy thinks he could, and says as much, flashing a barbed, wicked-looking golden arrow above his head. Pitch glances over, and laughs like the air’s been punched out of him.

“Really? You  _really_ think that’s the same?” He draws in a laboured-sounding breath, and spits, “Your friends wanted you  _back!_ ”

Sandy glares at him until his harsh, coughing laughter stops.

“You don’t know, Sandy,” Pitch says, at last, his voice very small and infinitely tired. “You don’t _know_. You were only a few hours in the dark. You’re still yourself, you haven’t done anything to make them hate you. You don’t _deserve_ their hatred.” Sandy gets the feeling that Pitch is only talking to himself when he half-whispers, “You’re still the person they want back.”

Sandy, for the first time in a long time, finds himself silent because he has no idea what to say. The silence stretches on from merely awkward to oppressively heavy, ringing in Sandy’s ears in a way his own silence never does. Before he can think of how to respond, Pitch turns his face away.

“Go tell them the truth. Leave me alone to enjoy being cared for, for the short while that I still can.”

Sandy nearly stamps his foot in frustration. Instead, he gets carefully up from the chair he’d been sitting in, balls it up into a cloud of formless sand, and stomps silently to the door.

He looks back just before he turns the handle. Of course, Pitch hasn’t moved. With the shadows hanging lifeless and empty around him, he could almost be a stranger.

Sandy presses his little fingers over his own heart, recalling its wild race as he spun fiery loops through constellations and wove through asteroid belts, recalling the chill of fear piercing it through, recalling the first time he’d touched a nightmare that hadn’t turned to gold under his fingers. How long had it been? How had Pitch managed to convince himself that he was unique in his pain, and in all these centuries, never question it?

The Guardians are waiting as soon as Sandy swings the door open, their faces open and expectant and oh, so trusting. “Well?” Jack asks, speaking for all of them, as Sandy shuts the door behind him with a soft click.

 _Go tell them the truth_ , Pitch had said.

 _He is who he says he is_ , Sandy finally signs.

Who that will be, Pitch will have to decide.


	28. Chapter 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honour of Blackgeneral Week on tumblr, I borrowed (with permission) one of [zinfandelli](zinfandelli.tumblr.com)’s AUs, [in which Koz and Pitch are twins and also happen to be vampires](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1583996/chapters/3524354). This ficlet takes place well before the events of that fic, a decent while after Koz is turned by Pitch. A great big warning for same-sex sibling incest (although this is not a sexual relationship exactly; they’re undead, it’s complicated), consensual violence, and Stockholm syndrome (or something like it).

Finding Pitch, once Koz made up his mind, was just too easy. After the lengths Koz had gone to trying to escape his twin, to find Pitch in the same city, within a few blocks of the hotel Koz had chosen, was enough to make crackling, jagged laughter well up in Koz’ chest, sharp edges scraping his lungs raw and tearing at his throat. He didn’t dare let go of even the smallest chuckle, didn’t trust himself to be able to stop once he’d begun. Besides, if he made so much as a sound, he felt certain that he’d only force open the the cracks running through him, shake himself to pieces.

It was astounding that he’d made it this far without anyone seeming to notice: couples strolling in the dusk air happily engrossed in each other, poets staring out over the Seine with the moon shining in their eyes, folk spilling out of the bars and cafes with real, genuine laughter on their lips. All unaware of the monster in their midst. All unaware of how close he was to breaking.

The door to Pitch’s room wasn’t locked, the knob turning easily in Koz’ hand. Koz wondered whether he’d find Pitch behind it, just watching, waiting patiently for the inevitable. The thought forced Koz to choke back something that might have been a laugh or might have been a sob. Pitch had known. There was no point in trying to deny it any longer. Pitch had always known.

Still, he stood rooted in front of the door for longer than he needed, staring at its painted panels and listening to the heavy silence from the other side, picturing his twin, inside, doing the same. They’d always been each other’s mirror, each other’s shadow. What a fool he’d been, to think he could escape it - !

Koz slammed a fist into the doorframe, throwing open the door with all of his considerable strength before he could convince himself to turn away again.

Pitch wasn’t waiting for him. At the sound of the door slamming against the wall behind it, he glanced up from the sketch he was busy putting to paper, and gave Koz a look of withering scorn before turning back to his drawing. “Civilized people knock.”

Koz huffed out a breath, short and with a black sort of humour, at the thought of either of them - murderous, bloodthirsty _animals_ \- acting like civilized people. He couldn’t help, though, the way the jagged edges in his chest seemed to smooth at the sound of Pitch’s voice, real and present and not the half-remembered whisper that had haunted his nightmares and been his constant tormentor in his waking hours while they had been separated. He took a deep breath, trying to ground himself, taking in the staleness of the closed room, the dust of the charcoal Pitch had used for his sketches, the faint unpleasant under-layer of old blood and decay, and, most importantly, the familiar scent of his brother.

Pitch looked up again from his work, this time catching Koz’ gaze and holding it. “Are you here to shout at me for following you, or have you finally come to your senses?” Only the faintest flicker of hesitation confirmed the sincerity of the question, and a surge of wicked satisfaction mingled with the old desire to reassure and comfort Pitch stabbed through Koz like lightning.

His mouth turned desert-dry as he tried to form the words he’d repeated to himself so many times in his thoughts, his tongue laden with the weight of what his admission would mean. That there truly was no difference between them. That he was just as much of a monster as Pitch was, as Pitch had made him. That there was no turning back.

Pitch didn’t so much as blink, his eyes shining an unwholesome yellow in the dimness. It was only the knowledge of how inhuman he himself must seem - how inhuman they both _were_ \- that let Koz hold his gaze.

“I’m back,” he sighed, at last, and felt the weight of the truth he hadn’t let himself know settle over him like a cloak, like armour, heavy and cold.

Pitch unfolded from his seat in one smooth movement, tossing aside drawings and supplies without a second glance, and glided across the room like a late-evening shadow, the triumph in his smile tempered by relief. “You never should have left,” he said, low and soft, as he reached out to take both of Koz’ wrists in his hands, digging in his fingers just to the point of pain. Koz couldn’t blame him; he himself clenched both hands into fists to keep from reaching out to clutch at Pitch himself, keep himself from tearing and biting and clawing, letting loose the tension coiled in his chest and humming through his veins. He wanted - he _needed_ to prove, with blood and bone, that Pitch was really here, within his grasp.

His touch was hesitant, each movement slow and gentle and painfully deliberate, as he reached up to cup Pitch’s cheek. Pitch’s eyes flicked closed, and he leaned into Koz’ palm for the briefest of instants before giving a low chuckle and fixing Koz with a look that turned the coiled energy caged in Koz’ bones to liquid fire.

“You don’t have to worry about breaking me,” Pitch said, his voice gone strange and thick, and Koz felt his own grip tighten, shifting into something closer to a chokehold almost without his input. The world narrowed to hold only him and his twin, the only mirror image of himself he’d ever see again, with eyes bright and wild and smile sharp and unhinged and dangerous, and Koz didn’t even realise his fangs had slid down until he pulled Pitch to him and crushed their lips together in something more like a battle than a kiss.

Koz didn’t notice Pitch had let go of his arms until he felt his twin’s fingers curl into his chest just below his collarbone, clawed nails piercing through the light fabric of his shirt and biting into his skin, leaving lines of fire in their wake as Pitch dragged both hands down towards his navel. Koz hissed into Pitch’s mouth, and was rewarded by the sudden sharp jab of a fang into his lower lip and a burst of blood on his tongue, tugging a moan from somewhere dark and desperate within him. He pulled away with difficulty, taking a few stumbling steps backwards, each shaking breath making the gouges in his chest sting and burn, and rubbed away the bright bead of crimson that welled from the slight wound with a fist, trying to keep from licking it away instead. Like an animal. Like - like -

Pitch hadn’t stopped grinning, and between the feral light in his eyes and the way Koz’ blood stained his lips and jagged teeth with garish red, the feline arch of his back as he leaned in to close the distance between them, there seemed to Koz to be nothing human left in him. A shiver tore through Koz at the feeling of his brother’s hands curling into his hair, possessive and almost gentle, at the mocking sympathy in Pitch’s voice when he sighed, “Oh, Koz.”

Both hands tightened abruptly into fists, yanking on Koz’ hair and roughly forcing his head back, exposing his throat. A snarl curled his lips and made Pitch laugh, a rolling, dark sound that vibrated through Koz’ spine. Pitch pressed closer, until Koz could have felt his heartbeat if either of them had still had one, his breath chill against Koz’ neck as he licked a long stripe up to Koz’ ear and whispered, “Don’t hold back.”

Koz’ breath caught, the ever-present hunger flaring through him at Pitch’s words, the urge to touch and tear and break boiling over, and he reached up to wrap a hand around Pitch’s throat. The gashes in his chest burned as he pushed his twin off of him, squeezing until Pitch made a choked sound and released his grip to scrabble at Koz’ arm, grinning like a maniac the whole time. Koz held him there for only a moment longer, before throwing Pitch bodily across the room. It was with a savage satisfaction that he watched Pitch fly into the chair he’d been sitting in when Koz had entered the room, knocking it over with a painful-sounding crunch.

A faint groan echoed from behind the overturned chair, followed by a breathless laugh, quickly growing louder and more delighted. It stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and Pitch’s voice said, with a touch of awe barely audible through gritted teeth, “I think you just broke two of my ribs. Ah! - three.”

Before Koz really knew himself that he meant to move, he was already standing over Pitch, noting with desire the pained lines that marred Pitch’s devilish grin, the challenge in the look he fixed on Koz. Koz, without thinking, reached down, flattened one hand against Pitch’s sternum, and leaned all his weight against it.

The resulting gasp was like music. Pitch swore, and tried to pry Koz off of him, giving up only when Koz’ wrist was bleeding like a fountain and staining the white of Pitch’s linen shirt as though he’d been murdered. Koz made the mistake of looking down, and every other thought was scoured from his mind by the sudden, white-hot intensity of his hunger.

“I missed you,” he managed to lisp through extended fangs, shifting his weight off of Pitch for a better angle as he pressed his lips against his brother’s neck, just above the vein, in a mockery of a kiss, before biting down.

Undead blood wasn’t the same as fresh, lacked the heat, the pulse, the _life_ that made it so impossible to resist. But this was _Pitch,_ his brother, his maker, the other part of his soul, and Koz felt nothing so much as the familiar warmth of homecoming as Pitch’s blood flowed thick and sweet over his tongue.

Pitch’s touch was surprisingly gentle as he stroked Koz’ hair, and Koz stifled a quiet sob against his brother’s skin as a cold hand guided Koz’ battered wrist to Pitch’s mouth, a cold tongue deftly lapping at the blood there. Pitch’s voice, too, when he finally spoke, sounded strangely kind, filled with something Koz couldn’t quite put a name to.

“Welcome home.”


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A collection of short fics (some three-sentence fics, some merely very short) in response to prompts from tumblr. Featuring a variety of ships and AUs.

**(Prompt: _Pitchmas! :D_ )**

If there was one thing that Pitch Black was not expecting to find upon finally clawing his way to the surface after a rather embarrassing defeat, it was a  _gift_. Yet there it was, sitting innocently under one of the large evergreen trees that stood scattered around the clearing, wrapped up in paper so dark green that it was almost black, with a massive red bow on top.

“Very funny,” Pitch snarled into the night in general, approaching the box as though it were about to sprout teeth and snap at him, which, considering who must have left it there, might not be too far off; however, once he finally managed to overcome his apprehension and unwrap the damned thing, the sight of a far-too-familiar golden collar and belt seemed, to him, to have been far more painful than any bite could have been.

…

**(Prompt: _North vs the 8000, it end up in everybody eating waffles at breakfast in las vegas and a vacation week paid by the goverment._ North vs. the 8000 refers to a Hellboy AU created by [gretchensinister,](gretchensinister.tumblr.com) in which North, Bunny, and Tooth are the inhuman soldiers of a secret anti-supernatural strike force, Pitch and Sandy are eldritch monster-gods that the others are trying to stop before they destroy the world, and Jack is a poor befuddled human agent assigned to be North's 'handler'.)**

It felt strange, Jack realised, to no longer be hunted or hunting; he found himself looking over his shoulder, starting at the softest sounds, regarding coincidences with deepest suspicion, only for as long as it took him to realise he no longer needed to, that now his careful precautions were only paranoia, that rather than being abruptly cut from his moorings into a world full of magic and monsters, he was now adrift (and without a paddle) in the world of ordinary life.

He only realised how far down the rabbit hole he’d fallen when he found himself scarfing down a gigantic and well-earned victory breakfast in an IHOP down the street from the still-smoking wreckage of the convention centre (they’d underestimated the volatility of having every possible pair of vessels in one place at the same time), with a six-foot-tall, intelligent, bipedal rabbit, a _seven_ -foot-tall shirtless giant who was good-naturedly stealing everyone’s waffles, and a woman who was trying with little success to hide her brilliant dragonfly wings, all of them in various states of singed, and Jack had to be told why people were staring.

“You don’t, though, do you?” he asked, when Tooth told him that everyone gets used to it eventually; she shifted uncomfortably in her seat, tugging at the downy feathers that were starting to grow back along her arms, and admitted, “No, you don’t.”

**…**

**(Prompt: _You know those adorable jingling sounds the dreamsand makes when Sandy speaks? What if when he 'sings,' it sounds like a really dainty music box? And maybe he's responsible for some reports of fairy music late at night_.)**

Jack is still too new to have many memories, too young to have picked up superstitions from the humans around him - even if he didn’t keep his distance from them whenever he could bring himself to, the sucking nothingness-ache of being walked through always so fresh in his mind - so when he hears a gentle, distant almost-music, more like the soft chime of a breeze sighing through a forest of hanging bells than anything else, he doesn’t so much as hesitate before taking to the air to follow it.

The being Jack finds spilling both song and impossible golden trails of sand into the velvet night fills him with a kind of awe, a reverence that does not demand distance, does not preclude touch, much like the ice that had bloomed under his fingers on that first, fateful night; he reaches up without thinking to run his hand through one of the starlight trails that flows past him, and the singer stops abruptly, staring down at Jack with a look that is filled with nothing but mild curiosity.

Jack’s heart leaps into his throat and lodges there at the feeling of being  _seen_ for the first time in his existence, and yet, when the golden being beckons Jack to join them on their cloud, all Jack can think of to say are not words of thanks or a plea for reassurance, but only, “Please, don’t stop singing,”; the golden being smiles, broad and bright and warm as the first thaw of a spring that Jack can no longer see, pats the back of Jack’s hand, and fills the night again with the song of silvery bells.

…

**(Prompt: _PITCH/JACK WEREWOLF AU_ )**

“You’re not gonna get away with this,” the boy-creature spits through sharp teeth already clenched against the next wave of pain, tugging uselessly at the silver-laced restraints that hold him pinned down to the cold steel gurney where Black conducts all his examinations. “I - I’ve got a pack, they’ll find me -”

“If they were going to rescue you, they would have done so by now,” Black interrupts, smoothly, minutely adjusting his rubber gloves as he watches his subject thrash helplessly before slumping back, exhausted; “perhaps,” he continues, as if nothing had happened, “you should give a little more thought to my offer.”

**…**

**(Prompt: _The Meta on Nightlight and Sandy's relationships with starlight and how they interlink._  )**

It’s  _not_  the same for both of them, that much is clear from the moment that the thread of sparkling sand weaves itself around the spectral boy, who lets out a chiming giggle at the ticklish twining of golden grains. The dreamsand doesn’t prickle and tickle and fizzle and zap like Nightlight’s beams can; it flows, honeygolden and honeythick, like lullaby notes, moonlight on a calm sea. Its ripples are sleepy and soft and feel like safety, the slow warmth of a dimming fire in a well-known hearth and kind arms round you as the night settles down in a silver-specked blanket all around you. But there is just a hint of something, some slumbering spark of energy (some might say ‘mischief’), that, to those who can read such things, tells of a common root with Nightlight’s own wild, crackling, electric-pulsing energy, the gold and the blue each recognising in the other a kindred force and each calling the other to it with a pull that is neither magnetic nor gravitational but is as irresistible as either.

It shocks Nightlight to the core, not the ephemeral zing of electricity but the earthshaking of tectonic plates colliding, and for just a moment he  _feels_  every strand of dreamsand as Sandy must, a web of gold that weaves around the world, a nervous system made of starlight splayed out under nighttime skin and shivering with all the newfound, new-joined energy of an eternal youth.

**…**

**(Prompt: _I would love to see more Golden Age OCs, people that aren’t in the army and are affected by the war in different ways._ )**

The scar over her eye is thick and twisted, ropy bands of knotted tissue that force the lids closed over the milky marble that no longer has the power of sight. It’s an ugly scar, made the uglier for the beauty of the face it mars, and speaks of deep wounds and long healing, healing that even now cannot be called complete.

She is not young, not any longer, but she is far too young for the twist of her back or the limp in her step. She is not old, not by any measure, but for the look in her one good eye. Her ‘good’ eye, the one that opens, is a soft grey like ash or clouded skies, its look intelligent and wary, always wide, always darting. Too knowing, too fearful. Too much aware of the way that calamity can strike without warning, can leave a world in ruins in the briefest of instants.

She stops dragging the hoe through thick black soil at the distant sound of skyships, stares up through the haze of the too-thick atmosphere with one hand shielding her face from the shimmering glare of the sun. She once loved the sunlight, the brilliant hues it imbued the world with, the heat of it filling the ground and sinking soothingly into her bones, the dazzling deep blue fading to a twilight purple just overhead, a smattering of stars just visible even in the brightest day. The sun here is not the same, too distant, this planet too cold, too dark even in the wake of the scouring armies. But then, since the attacks, half the settlement have been unable to stand the sunlight at all. Even the brilliant colours of bright summer sunlight which she loves so dearly strike her good eye like claws.

The distant roar overhead resolves into the familiar whirr of the supply ships touching down, and her shoulders settle in relief. She leaves the row she’s hacking open, a gouge in the surface of a planet that she feels with each passing year will never belong to her, a wound that will never leave a scar on its vast face, and using the hoe as a makeshift crutch, hobbles through the fine mist toward the sound of engines.

**…**

**(two separate three-sentence fics for prompts for a femslash Western AU, both of which ended up set in the universe of the 2011 movie[Priest](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0822847/) because I have zero background knowledge of Westerns and really like vampires)**

Light from the streetlights outside flickers through the slatted walls as the train rattles on through the town, falling in long gashes across the body lying prone on the floor, its long black coat tangled around it, a few locks of brilliant, jewel-coloured hair matted down with blood from the pool the head lies in.

Seraphina licks her lips at the sight, and at the smell, the ever-present roaring hunger gnawing at her belly; she ignores it with practiced diligence, instead prodding her long-time rival, the huntress who has chased her across the continent, seeking vengeance for something Seraphina’s already forgotten, delicately in the side with one foot; a grimly triumphant smile crosses her lips when Iana lets out a soft groan of pain and rolls over, turning her bloodied face to the sky.

“You’re dying, dear,” Seraphina whispers, leaning down so that she can pour her words directly into Iana’s ear and watch the understanding bleed into Iana’s lovely amethyst eyes, remembering as she does her own death and the pain and the power of her rebirth; “now you have to decide, will you die as a hunter…or will you live on, with me?”

            -

Maybe she should feel more guilt over abandoning everything she’d ever stood for in a moment of - weakness, perhaps, or mortal terror, or plain insanity - or perhaps she should feel some kind of remorse or regret for the small settlement that she and Sera had torn apart in celebration, but all Iana finds she really feels guilty for is not feeling guiltier. Perhaps that’s part of the transformation, perhaps that’s what let Sera turn against her and the hunters so completely, but Iana knows even as she thinks it that that’s not so; Sera has always been wild, too wild to be fenced in or pinned down, always been greater and stranger and  _more_  than what anyone knows of her, and if she’s being honest with herself, Iana thinks that she knew Sera would one day leave the hunters from the day they both joined.

And, while Iana’s being honest, she’d always known that, when that day inevitably came, sooner or later, she’d follow.

…

**(Prompt for vampire!North/Pitch from[ksclaw](ksclaw.tumblr.com)’s [AU](http://ksclaw.tumblr.com/post/98665404657/how-about-some-pitchmas-stuff-inspired-by-the))**

It had been…difficult, at first, dealing with all the changes that Nicholas had undergone, some more difficult than others; there are some things that Kozmotis still can’t understand or accept, things that he knows will, sooner or later, tear him and his dearest love apart.

But for now, he only savours every moment they have together all the more, knowing what must come; after all, even the most impossible of changes has not altered the fact that Nicholas is the man (or more than man) Kozmotis loves, and so far, the one thing that has not changed is the way that Nicholas feels about Kozmotis. And even with the strangeness, even with the changes, it is still Nicholas who gathers Kozmotis into his arms, whether those arms are strong and tanned or many, small, and winged.

…

**(Prompt: _Eggnog-The flowershop next door to the tattoo parlor, if such a thing can be arranged_ )**

Aster made a habit of complaining loudly and bitterly about the shop next door - its clients were always, without exception, big and hairy and frightening to his customers, and they all seemed to drive impossibly loud motorcycles that belched noxious black smoke that  _definitely_  couldn’t be good for  _any_  of Aster’s blooms, especially not some of the rarer and more delicate (and more expensive, it went without saying) flowers that he kept for a more  _select_  clientele.

His complaining had another purpose, however, and that was to give him a good excuse to go across to the Wonderland Tattoo Parlour on a regular basis and pick a fight with its owner, who was just as intimidatingly large and hairy as any of his customers, and had the most impressively noisy bike of the lot, and also had a warm, indulgent smile and a laugh like the richest chocolate fudge and a twinkle in his brilliantly sapphire eyes that only grew stronger when he was pushing Aster’s buttons and knew it.

Aster thought he’d kept his raging crush well-hidden under his facade of animosity, but when Nicholas had interrupted his latest rant to say, “So, next time you come, you will bring me flowers, da?”, Aster knew he’d been caught; he wasn’t sure, even as he sputtered and tried to deny it, that he was entirely sorry.

…

**(Prompt for White Christmas)**

The spirit that had started to plague Santoff Claussen wasn’t Pitch, or any of his minions, unless he’d learned a whole host of new tricks in his imprisonment; its repertoire seemed to include mysterious disembodied laughter on the wind at night, sudden, inexplicable drops in temperature, and unexpected showers of snow that left everyone who was caught in one in an almost preternaturally giddy mood for hours afterwards. Still, it was unknown, and unpredictable, which made it dangerous, and Nicholas St. North had never been able to resist such a combination, especially now that the home he’d found for himself and the family he’d made there were at stake.

It had been no easy matter, finding an invisible spirit, and by the third night of his hunt, North had to admit that the clues he’d thought he was following were only leading him astray; he was about to give up and go back to see if he couldn’t find a spell or something that would trap the spirit, whatever it was, when -  _something_ , something he couldn’t quite describe, something vast and sharp and bright, like a blizzard of laughter and memories of sunlight on snow and the intricate patterns of frost on the windows on a clear, cold, moonlit night, flooded through him and past him and left him staggering, with the unasked-for knowledge that, whatever it was that was haunting the woods, it liked him, and it wanted to play.

…

**(Prompt: _tooth/sandy first date_ )**

“Do you like tea? Coffee? How about a hot chocolate? Oh, I love the hot milk steamers here, they use sugar-free syrup -” Ana stopped herself from fluttering, smoothed a hand nervously over her hair, and smiled over and down at the blond boy from music class who she’d been trying, with little success, to ask out on a date for nearly the whole year. She’d only managed to get him to agree to come with her for coffee by asking for help with a percussion assignment, and even now, she wasn’t sure how she was going to tell him that she wanted it to be more than just drinks and homework; surely it wasn’t her fault that every time she tried to really _talk_  to him, to explain the way she felt, she kept getting interrupted, it really wasn’t fair, if only her friends would leave her alone for  _five whole minutes_  -

Alex -  _no, that wasn’t what his friends called him, it was always Sandy_  - gave her that sleepy, broad grin that made her knees turn wobbly and her heart hammer like a hummingbird’s, and ordered a drink in his soft, gentle voice; Ana tried to pay for both drinks, but he stopped her, and she thought her heart would actually stop beating when he said, “You know, if I’m taking you on a date, I’d like to pay.”


	30. Chapter 30

The mirror tells a story, and it’s not one that she likes.

Katherine has not looked at herself, not really _looked_ at herself, in what feels like far too long. She barely recognizes the soft curves of the body reflected back at her, the breasts that have ceased only to bud and begun at last to bloom now pressing softly against the fabric of her dress, the gentle rounding of hips and thighs, the treacherous slow swells of time working through her. She turns her head this way and that, trying to see the events of the past few years marked on her face, but all she sees are cheekbones and jawline beginning to surface from behind the last vestiges of baby fat, the plump roses of her cheeks in the first stages of their decay.

Little wonder that she hasn’t played among the other children in what feels like a lifetime.

Little wonder, she thinks, with a burst of bitter venom, that her spectral boy won’t meet her eyes.

The flood of hate comes sudden and surprising, and she wants nothing more than to mar her own thin skin, cut away everything that’s made the rift between them grow wider and clearer. She wants to do violence to each lovely curve, force it into conflict with a hard sharp line. Wants to feel her body peel away like a nasty scab, leaving her clean and fresh underneath. She wants to rip herself open and crawl out, new and bloodied and shaking, and ever just as she has always been.

She knows that she has never really been how she feels she has always been. She knows that knowing, somehow, drives her farther from that innocence that he inhabits, that she never can again. Katherine finds she doesn’t care. She doesn’t want this. She never asked for this.

She doesn’t want to be a child, and yet, she can’t bear the thought of being a woman.

Katherine bunches her hands in the fabric of her skirt, thinks of pressing her nails into her thighs, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to leave little red crescent moons in the flesh. She tries to turn her back on the mirror, but it draws her gaze again, draws her eye to the graceful arc of her back, its curve elegant as the throat of a swan – or perhaps of a goose. She hates it so much that she can’t look away, transfixed by the possibilities – the inevitabilities – the endings that the mirror spells out for her. None of them sound like fairy tales.

The window flies open with a bang, a stiff gust of wind carrying in a flurry of leaves and dust. For a moment, it whirls through the air around her, encircling her, hiding the mirror from view. Katherine tries to brush the leaves out of the way, but they only swirl closer around her, battering softly against her raised arms.

When the wind finally dies, when she can finally see her own reflection again, Katherine draws in a breath that she then forgets to release.

Her reflection is gowned in green.

The dress is like nothing she’s ever seen, except perhaps on the pages of certain beautifully illuminated storybooks. The collar is daringly low – to her, at least - revealing both her shoulders, and it fits to her slight new curves as though molded for them. All but the skirt, which flows out from her waist in great, heavy folds, and the sleeves, long and loose and draping almost to the floor. The gown shimmers silver whenever she moves, no matter how slightly.

She stares at her reflection, and her reflection stares back, unfamiliar and lovely and so, so grown-up.

It’s only after she’s stared for what feels like forever that she realizes the dress is all of leaves, shimmering with moon-bright spider’s silk, a spray of tiny, perfect snowdrops picking out the silver-white pattern curling over one sleeve and down across the dress’ bodice, spiraling out across the skirt.

“That’s not fair,” she says, but it comes out as more of a sigh.

The touch that flutters invisibly against her wrist is whisper-soft, light enough that Katherine might have dismissed it as nothing more than a breath of air if it did not immediately come again, brushing her thick hair back from her face. Another spray of snowdrops curls its way up around her ear and gently through her auburn hair, crowning her even as a featherlight and invisible touch raises her chin so that she meets her own eyes in the mirror. She looks older still with her face slightly upturned, somehow, and more confident than she feels, all the roundness of her face dissolving into angles, the light turning her hair to a halo. Her own reflection looks back at her like a stranger, proud and certain of her own beauty, and Katherine tries to turn her face away, only for a warm breeze like the palm of a gentle hand to brush her cheek, direct her gaze back to her own grey eyes in the silvered glass.

Those, at least, have not changed.

“ _Everyone’s_ a child compared to you,” Katherine complains, and a breeze kicks up, fluttering her skirts, the rattle and rustle of leaves like laughter. It grows stronger, its force whirling her gown apart into leaves and spiderweb again, and Katherine can’t help a laugh of her own as the whirlwind, for only an instant, takes the shape of a woman, smiling with something a little like pride and a little like mischief.

Katherine blinks, just once, but when she opens her eyes again Mother Nature has already vanished. Still, a smile sneaks its way across her face as she straightens the skirt of her own, far plainer dress.

She gives the mirror one last glance before she turns and walks away.


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to finish this for ROTG Fave Ship Week, Prompt #2: Mythology, but then life happened and it didn’t get done in time. Still, better very, very late than never?

Tia advertises herself as a ‘practitioner of positive magicks’, these days. She knows she catches some flak - snide comments about 'fluffy bunnies’, the occasional bad review on FaceBookOfShadows or Yowl from people who came in looking for curse ingredients - for her angel card readings and fairy garden offerings, but she’s been at this for long enough that it doesn’t really bother her anymore. She’s seen what the 'dark side’ has to offer, and honestly, it’s a little underwhelming.

Besides, her garden never gets bugs or blight, and there’s never a line when she stops for coffee. She must be doing something right.

She tags along to circles mostly because Sandra invites her. Tia’s got nothing against Gaia, but then, she’s never gone in much for gods in general. In her opinion, they’re a little like cats. She’s not sure what they really have to do with the craft, other than contributing to the aesthetic, and giving them treats (or, in the case of gods, offerings) just encourages them.

Tia can’t resist a party, though, and the summer solstice is the biggest party until Samhain. The potlatch is always to die for, too, especially if St. North brings his famous, if unseasonal, gingerbread.

St. North and his gingerbread are, thankfully, in attendance this year, as are Jackie and her punch, and Aster and her egg salad. The rest of the usual suspects all seem to be in attendance - Tia even catches sight of Koz lurking in a darkened corner, despite the fact that she’s pretty sure they’ve dedicated themselves to Trickster - as well as a few new faces. A couple of teenagers, the girl who looks like she’s humouring the boy’s wide-eyed enthusiasm; a cluster of four middle-aged ladies who came with velvet robes and a bad case of the giggles; a scholarly-looking older gentleman who gives the impression that at any moment he might whip out a pipe and start puffing on it thoughtfully; and a statuesque woman of indeterminate age in a green silk shift that ripples like a field of long grass in a high wind when she moves, which is not often. She stands a little apart from the crowd, surveying the buffet table and the lawn with a gaze that would seem casual and unconcerned if it weren’t for the intensity of her dark eyes.

“Is that one of Koz’ relatives?” Tia asks Sandra, nudging her with one elbow to get her to look in the stranger’s direction. If anyone should know anything about Koz’ relatives, it’s bound to be Sandra.

But Sandra just shrugs, and then gestures towards the table, already groaning with food. Tia glances from the tempting spread to the woman in green, and makes up her mind.

“I’m going to go find out,” she says. Sandra shrugs again, reaching up to snag a samosa off one of the plates Tia’s carrying before making a beeline for the table.

The woman in green seems surprised when Tia approaches her, as though she hadn’t expected it, even though Tia had watched her watching the party all the way over. Her long, dark hair falls in shining waves to the small of her back, her proud nose and olive skin betraying some Mediterranean heritage. Probably not a relative of Koz’, then. Up close, she’s even taller than she’d seemed, towering over Tia by at least two full feet. Somehow, still, even when she’s literally looking down at Tia, she doesn’t seem to be looking down on her.

Tia offers the plates she’s holding almost as an excuse - no, wait, definitely as an excuse. Sandra would tell her off for being such an insufferable busybody - after she was done debriefing Tia for all the gossip, of course. “Sorry, I thought you were a friend of mine. Well, a relative of a friend of mine,” she babbles, laughing to cover her sudden attack of nerves. There’s something deeply unsettling about being the sole focus of the stranger’s attention. “I noticed you didn’t seem all that interested in the food, but I made samosas and some veggie pakoras, and I happen to think they’re my best batch yet, I’ll have to come up with some other recipe if I want to top myself for Samhain, maybe something with pumpkin in it? I know it’s a cliché, but -”

Tia’s tongue tangles into a knot in her mouth when the stranger reaches one elegant, long-fingered hand down and selects a pakora from the plate Tia holds out. She brings it up to eye level, gazing intently at it as she turns it that way and this, and Tia notices that her talon-like nails are black - not like they’ve been painted or shellacked, but like they’re made of black horn.

Tia’s read plenty of books where characters have been described as having teeth like strings of pearls, but this is the first time she’s met someone who seems to deserve it. The stranger’s teeth, when she opens her mouth to take a bite of the pakora, are brilliant white, somehow slightly iridescent, and seem just a little too sharp for being set into a human-looking face.

Tia realises she’d just thought 'human-looking’ instead of 'human’ at the same time as the stranger sinks those unusually sharp teeth into Tia’s - there’s no other word for it - offering. The stranger’s eyes sink closed as her mouth does, and a little smile curls it upwards at the corners.

“That is delicious,” she says, swallowing, and Tia feels heat rising up the back of her neck. The stranger’s voice is surprisingly deep, smooth and dark as velvet.

“Oh, good,” Tia babbles. “Do you like the spice blend? I hope I can get it right again, I only figured it out through trial and error, and it was a whole lot of error -”

The stranger turns her smile on Tia, opening her eyes. Tia had thought they were dark before, but somehow they’re not. They’re a deep, rich, emerald, though no less intense than they had been.

“I’m certain you will,” she says, and there’s a strange quirk to her smile, a curious lilt to her voice, as though there’s more behind her words than just a simple hope or reassurance.

Tia tries to swallow, realises how dry her mouth’s become.

“Would - would you like a samosa, too?” she manages, and the stranger smiles at that, wide and white and real, before reaching down and taking one.

…

Sandra looks up from the buffet when Tia slams down her plates on the table. Both Sandra’s eyebrows shoot towards her hairline, and she smiles expectantly.

“She’s not a relative of Koz’,” Tia says, almost snarls. She doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly so angry. “She calls herself Serafina, and she’s stunning and awe-inspiring and _weird_ , and I think she might be Gaia in disguise.”

Tia hadn’t thought it would be possible for Sandra’s eyebrows to climb any higher, and yet somehow she manages it.

“I don’t know either!” Tia complains. “But there’s _something_  going on with her. And it’s midsummer, and we’re throwing a party just to celebrate and invoke Gaia, and, I mean, if gods like Wiseman can turn up in human guise to test the faith of their followers, then why not her? And I think -” She has to stop and swallow hard. Her mouth is still dry, despite the two margaritas she’d poured down her throat. “I think I just made her an offering.”

Sandra’s eyebrows drop back down so fast that Tia can almost hear the thunderclap. The smile that crosses her sweet face is incongruously wicked.

“No,” Tia says. “ _No_. I know what you’re thinking, and no.”

Sandra’s smile grows, if possible, even wider.

…

Tia’s angel cards stop talking to her the next day.

She’s just sat down to do a reading - for a paying customer, no less - but when she lays out the cards in a spread, every single card she flips is blank. The little hand-painted angel figures, with all their wings and eyes and rich robes, are gone.

“I’m - I’m terribly sorry,” Tia says to the woman tapping her foot impatiently against the floor. She checks the deck - still full of painted angels - and gives it a shuffle, before laying down another spread. “Let’s try that again.”

The first card she flips is blank.

“Is this supposed to happen?” Tia’s client asks. There’s an edge in her voice like she’s ready to get up and walk out.

Tia flips all of the cards. Blank, blank, blank.

Tia flops back in her chair, and stares at the empty spread in front of her in disbelief.

She ends up refunding the client. As she’s showing the woman the door, apologising profusely, she happens to look down.

There’s a zucchini on her front step.

…

Tia tries reading for herself. Tries a little crystal healing. Tries to summon a fairy guide.

It doesn’t matter what she does. There’s radio silence from beyond the veil. Whatever Tia was in contact with before, it’s packed up and walked out on her.

Tia is  _mundane_.

…

Sandra arrives in record time. When Tia answers the door, she’s holding two acorn squash and giving Tia a puzzled look.

“What’re those for?” Tia asks. Sandra shrugs, gesturing to Tia’s front step, and Tia barely bites back a groan.

“Excellent! This is just what I needed.” She throws her hands up in the air, before tugging on her hair with both fists. “Sandra, you’re the expert. How do I get  _rid_  of a god’s favour?”

Sandra’s eyebrows shoot up, and she gives Tia a warning look.

“Ooh, I know, but - I don’t know what else to do!” She steps back to let Sandra in to the entryway, sitting down on the lowest of the stairs. “She’s scaring off everything else, and I don’t know anything about nature workings, and I don’t want a patron god, and I’m  _not_  doing any quests or missions, and she keeps giving me vegetables -” She cuts herself off with a strangled, frustrated scream into her hand.

Sandra purses her lips, and Tia can tell she’s trying not to laugh. “It’s not funny,” she protests, aware that she’s whining.

Sandra shifts one of the acorn squash to the other arm so she can waggle a hand in disagreement. Tia sighs.

“All right, maybe it’s a little funny,” she mutters, and pushes herself up off the steps. “Well, are you planning to stand out here laughing at me all night, or are you going to come up and help me?”

…

Sandra’s something of an expert on summonings, divinations, and spirit communications, but even she can’t get anything from Tia’s usual suspects. The shit-eating grin slowly fades from her face the longer she can’t get any signal, and she finally sits back with a frown, stubbing out a cone of incense with her thumb.

“See? I told you!” Tia complains, waving an arm towards the chalk circles and little piles of offerings that Sandra’s scattered across her kitchen floor. “It’s like having a shark swimming around! All the little fishes got scared off and now they’re hiding!” She fixes Sandra with a glower that melts the delighted grin that scrolls across Sandra’s face. “And don’t you dare make some crack about there being plenty of fish in the sea.”

Sandra shrugs both shoulders, and then climbs up from where she’s been sitting on the floor. She gathers up her divination kit, and starts towards the door.

“Oh, wait! Please, you’re not just giving up, are you?” Tia runs after her, catching Sandra just as she’s about to step out into the stairwell. “Sandra, I’m serious. All of my magic is gone! What am I going to  _do_?”

Sandra pauses, with Tia’s hand on her elbow, and looks up. There’s no hint of a smile on her face as she looks deeply, searchingly, into Tia’s eyes, and says, “Talk to her.”

Tia stammers over an attempt at a comeback, but Sandra only pats her arm and gently prises her grip free, making her way out the apartment door and down the stairs.

…

The next morning, Tia can’t get her front door open for vines. A perfect, round, blood-red tomato thwacks her in the knuckles when she tries to wrench the door free.

She leaves the shop closed for the day, heads upstairs to find her chalk.

…

Gaia appears with a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning, fog rolling off of her and filling Tia’s small apartment. She’s the same as she’d appeared at midsummer, and yet different as well - she hadn’t sported the heavy, curved black horns that are tangled in with her masses of thick dark hair, and her eyes had not had snake-pupil slits, and she had not been accompanied by a distant sound of rain and birdsong.

She appears triumphant in Tia’s apartment, arms spread wide and a look of self-satisfied benevolence on her face. It very quickly disappears when one of Tia’s decorative pillows bounces off the side of her head.

“Ow!” Gaia says, her beautiful deep voice echoing with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as she reaches down to pick up the pillow. “What the -”

She seems to notice, for the first time, Tia standing in the middle of the room, breathing hard and with another decorative pillow ready to throw.

“Go away!” Tia yells. She’s pretty sure this isn’t what Sandra had meant when she’d said 'talk to her’, but…it’s talking. Well. Yelling. Same difference. “I was perfectly happy and fine without you! You drove away all my spirits, ruined my business, trapped me in my own home - I don’t need a patron! I don’t want your favour! Leave me alone!”

Gaia blinks. If Tia weren’t well acquainted with the legendary arrogance of gods, she’d almost think that Gaia looks shell-shocked.

“ _You_  approached  _me_ ,” she rumbles, dangerously. “You alone recognised me at my own festival, you made me an offering -”

“Only because I thought you were pretty!” Tia blurts, and then claps both hands over her mouth.

Gaia’s darkening expression suddenly switches to one of confusion.

“Lonely! I meant to say lonely!” Tia babbles, flapping her hands nervously. Gaia ducks one particularly wild swing with the pillow Tia’s still holding. “You didn’t have anybody with you, and I was just trying to be friendly, and - I don’t need a god,” she says, firmly, planting both hands on her hips and trying to look confident and menacing.

Gaia looms over her, her expression pure befuddlement.

“I am beauty itself, in its purest form, wild and untamed and awe-inspiring -” she starts, and then cuts herself off. “You think I’m pretty?”

“I’m - I’m very sorry if I’ve insulted you,” Tia says. “But, uh, yes?”

Gaia looks down at Tia, almost wonderingly. Tia stares back, defiant.

Gaia clears her throat.

“You may not need a god,” she says, enunciating every word carefully and not meeting Tia’s eyes. “But how about a girlfriend?”

It’s Tia’s turn to be dumbfounded.

“Um,” she says.

“Think about it,” Gaia says. There’s an evergreen hue to her stark cheekbones that Tia thinks, suddenly, crazily, must be a blush. Gaia clears her throat, throws her shoulders back, and shakes out her hair. “I shall expect your answer by Samhain,” she adds, imperiously, and goes a darker green when Tia rolls her eyes.

“I’ll think about it,” Tia says, finally. She looks up at Gaia’s strange green eyes, and finds herself compelled to add, “But…it would help my decision if you courted me?  _Not_  with vegetables,” she adds, hurriedly.

Gaia’s still green, but a wicked smile slashes a scimitar-curve across her face.

“Well, then,” she says. “It seems I have my work cut out for me. Very well, little mortal.”

“That’s not exactly the most endearing pet name,” Tia interrupts, but Gaia ploughs valiantly on.

“Prepare yourself to be courted,” she says, and then shoots Tia a wink that leaves Tia, momentarily, speechless. “Expect my visitation!”

And then, with another flash of lightning and clap of thunder, she’s gone again.

Tia stands in the middle of the living room for a full fifteen minutes before she can wrap her head around what just happened.

…

When Tia tells Sandra, Sandra laughs and laughs.


End file.
